To expect to be allocated airline seats next to my kids?

[correllia]

My partner and I are off on holiday to menorca at the end of September with Monarch. They have emailed us to tell us we can check in online now, which saves time at the airport.

So far so good - but to complete the process I have to prebook my seats at the cost of £5 per seat per flight. We are on a tight budget and deliberately haven't bought the seats in advance to save the pennies.

Kiddies are 2 and 4, whilst I don't mind our sitting 2 and 2 apart from each other but looking at the seat plan even this option is fast disappearing! Can the airline force such young children to sit next to strangers?

Am I unreasonable to demand that we sit with them?

PS this is my first post, so please be genttle :-)

Surely speedy boarding is for people who won't pay for allocated seats? If everyone has chosen an allocated seat at check in then you don't need to rush for the plane. It's all bollocks.

The airline is not passing parental responsibility to a random stranger though! The point is that they may in certain situations seat a child' next to an adult who can - ie is capable of- assisting the child in terms of health and safety. Thats all. Parental responsbility extends to keeping the child happy, entertained, etc etc. As long as the airline are fulfilling their obligations then end of story. In the event of a child being injured during turbulence, as long as the airline have complied with their obligations , its end of story. No way would the parents have a leg to stand on in court.

Northern Girl- but having a small child seated next to a parent is more than just for the common good. It's a minimum safety requirement.

Shit, I haven't read 7 pages. I can book a TRAIN ticket and know exactly where I will be sitting. The Plane companies can do exactly the same, if they want to. They don't because they get away with charging a huge premium to pre book your seat, or to go for priority boarding, They take the piss.

I flew to New York, and booked my seats on line. Wjy cannot I do that always?

The couple were saying, its not our fault, we're not wasting money doing speedy boarding, and the old man said, well i did and now my wife is on her own, thanks to you, next time please pay up.

But it wasn't thanks to her-it was thanks to the airline company. They knew that they had to sit the DC next to the parent-so why should she pay for something they couldn't take off without?-madness!
I also agree that if you have paid for an allocated seat you do not need priority boarding-you can sit and wait until the crush is over. The airlines need to get their act together.

Must. Not. Get. Sucked. Back. In....

Run Font, run. Run fast and run far or you'll be sucked back into the vortex!

The couple were saying, its not our fault, we're not wasting money doing speedy boarding, and the old man said, well i did and now my wife is on her own, thanks to you, next time please pay up.

And what about the other selfish feckers that didn't move.... SO A 2 YEAR OLD COULD SIT WITH A PARENT FFS!!!! A 2 yr old. Seriously, who is that selfish??

Argh...potty too late...oh wait...saved by the crying dd!

ok, have not read the thread so not sure if my reply is going to be helpful at this late stage. We flew back with Easy Jet last week and although the seats are not allocated they did save two rows at the back for parents with young children and they had not booked online . Not sure how helpful this is now so I may just slip away gently :)

Of course the airlines could do that Portofino. They have offered a 'stripped bare' service as people have said and they can get away with charging people £2.99 for peanuts, so they do. However I think there comes a limit to what people are willing to perceive as and pay for as "luxuries" as opposed to "necessities" and I think that the limit of what is luxury shows at its very starkest when up against H&S requirements. Once you start getting customers to pay for compliance with H&S as an extra or luxury you are treading a fine line. What then is the service a company is providing? Fuel and an unspecified seat rented for a fixed time. I think even budget airlines provide you with one free bottle of water or has that changed? Use of a toilet (barely - no pun intended). That's it. Seatbelts/Wheelchair adaptations/seating the vulnerable or disabled next to their carers/seating preschool children with an adult they are travelling with: all chargeable once you cross the charging for H&S line.

Ethics/Morality aside I suppose in commercial terms I just view H&S compliance as a fundamental cost of doing business/operational cost which should be budgeted for as such and managed (risk policies/insurance) - I just can't view it as a long term successful business model when you start to charge fundamental costs externally. Under law companies take on a greater portion of risk in consumer-business contracts because they have greater access to capital and insurance and are regulated in such a way to encourage minimising risk (e.g. a company cannot exclude or limit damages for personal injury or death in a consumer contract - because it would then be able to profit from not complying with H&S law for example). I don't see why the law would then allow any guidance to be interpreted in such a way that means companies are able to charge customers to comply with H&S guidance (because if that's the case the reverse must be true - companies do not have to comply unless the customer pays).

Ryanair always USED to let parents with children/people with mobility needs on to the plane first. I travelled with them many, many times when dd was small and never had a problem. They are no longer a "budget airline" so I really don't know why they bother.

We flew with them this weekend - cost of "ticket" - 10 euros each way. By the time we were done with booking charges, priority boarding, suitcases, it cost the 3 of us nearer to 300 euros!

There is no more cost to them to let you choose a seat when you do your online check in.

I haven't quite got to the end of the thread yet, but I think the attitude displayed by QueenofDenial, and then by others agreeing, is disgusting.

Two men should not be pressured into moving out of the front seats for a woman with a baby and toddler who wants to uses they skycot. They have needs that are as great as anyone elses, they probably have long legs and wanted the space. Why should they do what they have to do to get the space they need, then be asked to move because someone has chosen to make a journey with two infants? They probably didn't get any choice in the matter when they were given long legs.

And then to see people actually being glad that they have to have their flight disturbed because of someone elses baby, is really shocking.

Some parents really do think the fact they they reproduced gives them more right than anyone else, that their needs trump anyone elses, and it's very sad to see.

If you want seats together just cough up and pay for them or be prepared to argue. I have a different surname to my children and am frequently allocated seats away from them by travel companies, even though I stipulate that we should be seated together. I have always got us re seated at check in, although it isnt easy. You have to be very polite and just stand your ground.

It does amaze me though how once on board poeple just expect you to move for them. When travelling for work I have been asked to give up my ailse seat for a seat between two big men as there was a school party on board and a 15 yr old girl had been allocated that seat. The teacher and airline wouldnt let her sit between 2 strange men on a night flight, but they wanted me to move out of my pre booked seat and sit in the middle of the row, even though I was trying to work. I did move eventually as no one else would, but I wasnt happy.

We flew Monarch last year, didn't pre-book seats and got allocated extra-legroom seats :-)

elastamum and that wouldn't have happened if what I said way back still happened. Ie you get to the check in desk and the seats are filled up sequentially. Two lone travellers should not be able to leave a space between them (unless the plane is not full) nobody should be picking and choosing. You cannot do that in theatres.

We once paid £80 for our party to sit together, and it was not a cheap holiday. On top of that we paid about £300 for the "privelidge" of having our children sleep on sofa beds within the same apartment.
Total rip off.

As an aside we didn't pay for the airline meals but were given them anyway. When I told the steward that we hadn't paid she replied that it didn't matter as it was included in the cost of the holiday anyway!!

We paid for speedy boarding with Ryanair and the staff at the very small airport forgot to have a separate line or call speedy boarders forward so complete waste of money that never got back

Long legged people can stick their legs into the aisle, or use a seat near an exit, as most of my massively tall family members do without a fuss.

Skycots can only be used at the front of the plane, ergo these seats need to be prioritised for such purposes. There is no other realistic option for parents.

slaveoffilofax I was delighted that their flight was disturbed because they were rude.

That aside two single men do not have as much need as a woman travelling alone with a baby and toddler.

I have travelled many times with a baby and toddler and unless you have somewhere you can safely leave the baby (bassinet or floor in business) I imagine it would be near impossible: No helping the toddler in the toilet, cutting up their food etc.

Being a bit cramped is completely different.

I am put in my mind of the airline safety tests carried out whereby a prize of £5 was offered to the person to get off the plane first in a simulated evacuation.

Every time the young, fit males got so aggressive they would trample and stampede over the less able bodied passengers in order to win, often hurting them. And as the designer of the safety test pointed out afterwards, this was when it was a game and they knew they were not at risk of dying. In a smoke filled aircraft imagine what they would have been capable of?

I see the same principle at work with all the Speedy Boarding nonsense. Even if you have paid the fee, the young, fit men push past everyone else and elbow their way to privileged seats whenever they can, even at the expense of other people's comfort or convenience. It is not very nice to watch, and I am trying to bring my sons up otherwise. After all, if we have no courtesy and co-operation within society, what are we?

*I am put in my mind of the airline safety tests carried out whereby a prize of £5 was offered to the person to get off the plane first in a simulated evacuation.

Every time the young, fit males got so aggressive they would trample and stampede over the less able bodied passengers in order to win, often hurting them.*

When I was involved in an plane crash-situation (crashed at landing apparently plane nearly blew up) as an unaccompanied 10 year old, the air hostesses were the ones trampling the passengers to get out first!
To the point than when we were led out (last ones left on the planes) by random passengers, made it down the emergency slides and started racing away from the plane I remember looking up and seeing a very young child looking down from the plane window- he'd been left behind onboard.

Come off it SeniorWrangler who the hell do you think is going to hold back if there is a remote chance of getting off?

Noel Coward, in the days before trans-Atlantic flight, always took an Italian ship to America because he said that with the Italians there was no nonsense about women and children first!

Maybe they were rude, I wasn't there to be able to judge. Maybe you could explain exactly what they did that was so rude. Maybe they only became rude after their first 'no' wasn't accepted as it should have been. Did they pre book that space, or ask especially at check in do you know?

Maybe they were just put out at being asked in the first place. If I was a particularly tall person being asked to move because someone had chosen to make their own life more difficult by flying alone with a baby and toddler, I might find it a bit rude to be asked in the first place. It would make me feel like I was being really mean, and I wouldn't want to be made to feel like that just because I didn't want to sit in real discomfort for the duration of a flight.

Being cramped is not completely different to having the difficluty of travelling with a baby and toddler. I'm not trying to say it's easy to travel with two infants, I've done it and I know it's not, but it is a choice you knowingly make. Being tall isn't a choice, and it can genuinely hurt to be that cramped for a long period of time.

Take a sling, buy food that the toddler can easily manage when you are airside, if you're really really that incapable, ask the staff that are paid to help you to hold your baby for a minute, rather than inconvenience other passengers.

How did this woman expect to manage if she hadn't pre booked and paid for that space and she needed it so desparately? Or was she just hoping that other people would accommodate her and her children?

And, about having to help a toddler in the toilet, or with food while holding a baby, come off it! Haven't all of us that have had a baby and a toddler had to develop the ability to do things with one hand, or with a baby in between your arms? That's just normal stuff when it comes to having a baby and a toddler!