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 :-)

Fontsnob - parents are responsible for their own 2 year olds. I've flown with a 2yo. I paid for her seat to be next to mine because it was my responsibility to sort that out. I didn't actually want to pay! Nobody does!

It isn't fair to think that the rest of society should pay for something but if you have a 2 year old, you can take away what they've paid for and get it for free.

It's not about showing humanity to kids - it's about taking responbility for your kids. IMO, taking someone's plane seat that they organised and paid for in advance is just like asking the person in front of you in the supermarket queue to pay for your 2yo's nappies.

The exception is of course where the parent of the 2yo was totally unaware of the policy. The OP clearly is aware of the policy and needs to sort out the arrangements for her child to avoid interfering with other passengers.

Taking responsibilty or pandering to airlines who try to rip people off with their 'optional' charges? Why should anyone have to pay to sit next to their 2 year old???? Why should anyone pay to sit next to a window???? It's bullshit and is being perpetuated by the attitude that 'you should take responsibility for your kids' and cough up.

Either all seats should be allocated when booked like in the old days. Or no seats get booked like the easyjets of the world. Don't make parents (or passangers travelling with elderly people..etc...) pay for something just because other people can afford to pay. It works both ways if you want to use that argument.

I'm not suggesting it's a good policy/set of rules, of course it's totally shit.

That is not a good enough reason to ignore the policy and try and make other people move who have not ignored the policy. In fact, to knowingly do that is selfish and arrogant.

If my family was asked to move, I'd do it - I am not nasty and I would not upset a child - so I do not fit into your "lack of humanity" category. However, unless the adult concerned apologised for taking my paid for seats and made it clear that they were totally unaware of the policy, I would think they were selfish and arrogant.

that was x posted

Yes, I am fine with seats being allocated at the time of booking, that would be much better. I don't agree with the current policy but that doesn't mean I'll interfere with other people because I think the airline is being greedy.

You're talking about having manners then, please and thank you etc. We all appreciate manners. That wasn't the OP was it. The OP asked if she should expect to be able to sit with her 2 and 5yr old on a 4 hr flight. Yes, she should expect to. That doesn't mean it's okay to be rude. It means that we should live in a world the means you don't have to question being able to care for your small children. The fact that big corporations put people in this position is bullshit and tbh the people who say 'i have paid the extra £5 so am entitled to my seat and therefore won't move for a two yr old and their mother who didn't pay extra ££' are just as bad as anyone else with a 'sense of entitlement'.

Country going to shit...? Anything to do with the fact that we are constantly told that money money money gives us rights over everyone else.

No, you shouldn't have to pre-allocate seats and be charged in the process to sit next to a 2 year old. The onus isn't on the parent - it's on the airline.

It's a con.

As Mrs Lemon and Viva have said, it is a safety issue for everyone that a family should sit together. In an emergency a parent separated from a child would not follow the evacuation procedure, they would try to locate their child. And I would make that point clearly to any airline that did not see it for themselves.

I wish there was a [my head is steaming with rage] smiley

Andrewofgg - of course I would ask nicely and say thank you. When I was in this position I did ask very nicely. Something along the lines of "I'm really sorry to ask but is there any chance.....,etc as my dd is young and sobbing and ill"

Everyone still said no and these weren't people who had paid for allocated seats. So I wasn't asking to take away a paid for privilege.

Viva, that's really sad that you encountered a whole plane of selfish people :(

In fairness it wasn't the whole plane, but it was a fair amount of people in the immediate area. I didn't have time to canvass the whole plane as the stewardess was doing her nut as the plane was needing to start taxiing down the runway and I was still stood in the aisle.

Always a good time to throw up over the last person who said no [evil grin]

I prebooked seats on my last flight. With a wriggly nearly two year old I thought I would be doing passengers a favour by booking an aisle seat and centre seat so that dh and I could lay him across our laps to sleep or get out easily to walk him up and down the aisle.

When we got on the plane a girl on the row next to us was sobbing her heart out and her boyfriend, who had the window seat on our row was insisting to the crew member that they sat together because he was afraid of flying. He asked us to swap seats so that we had the window and centre seats or two aisle seats. We very politely declined because we had chosen our seats (and paid £60 for the privilege).

We got nothing but abuse firstly from them, and then from all of the passengers in the three rows surrounding us. The senior steward was actively encouraging this nonsense which went on for the duration of the flight. My favourite comment was 'not being funny, yeah, but at the end of the day, yeah, it's only money, yeah'. True, but in that case they should have paid it! Strangely enough, when the attention wasn't on him, his fear of flying disappeared.

I complained when I got home and was given as compensation ... a voucher for complementary sit together seats! No way was I going to give up my choice of seats for some mouthy yobs who felt that they were entitled to anything they wanted. For a young child and a polite request though ...

Fontsnob - no, I was not talking about manners at all. I am talking about someone conveying genuine remorse that they had taken something away that someone else paid for. It isn't about the airline at all in this scenerio, it's about the person/people who doesn't get what they chose and paid for.

Society has to be about money. Otherwise we would be communists. Just to add that I am not rich enough to take foreign holidays every year so am not sat here rolling in money thinking it's OK just to purchase anything you desire, airline seats or posessions. I just think if there are rules in our society that we should abide by them or try to go about changing them in a proper way. Not by interfering with people who abide by the rules.

It's not about communism being the only other answer, the rules are being made up by big corporations and we are falling line with it. I am no anarchist but this idea that paying for a certain plane seat is utter bollocks after paying so much for a ticket in the first place. It's not like a train where they take more passengers than there are seats.

It is about the airline, making this situation in the first place.

Interesting thread! FWIW we couldn't prebook our seats to guarantee we would get the infant cot on a trans-atlantic Virgin flight (which we would have been more than happy to pay for - it's Virgin policy - for whatever reason - that you can't prebook those seats). Got to airport. Told that the infant cot seats (the bulkhead) were prebooked and that we would have to sit elsewhere on the plane (and not necessarily together, mind) with two DC under 4 (and one who was young/small enough to qualify for the cot).

On the plane it transpired that two single men had, in fact, paid extra (how? and why weren't we able to?) to sit in the bulkhead, despite the fact that (according to the purser) those seats are specifically for people with DC young enough to fit in to them. He was infuriated on our behalf but still couldn't make the two single men move to accommodate a family (by the time he spoke to us, we were half way through the flight).

Fair enough, he said he was going to complain to Virgin HQ on our behalf, but it still begs the question: Why weren't we able to prebook?

(And I know this is totally random - but tangentially connected to the OP - to which I would reply, btw, it's unfair, but you should definitely pay the extra to ensure you sit next to your DC!)

Yes it is utter bollocks. But my point does not relate to the airlines, who are undoubtedly big greedy corporations. It relates to the person who has to give up the seat they paid for.

It's just as well you can't prebook seats on lifeboats.
It seems to bring out the worst in people. Would you argue about letting a mother and child onto a lifeboat ahead of you? Or a disabled person having a seat on a bus?
The enemy is the money-grabbing airline companies, not families.

ChocolateIsAFoodGroup - I thought those bulkhead seats which accomodate the cot were also classed as extra legroom seats so that's probably how the men booked them. Perhaps you can't prebook them as cot seats, but can prebook them as extra legroom seats?

MJ - OK the airline sorted it out but that involved taking something away that another passenger had paid for. Don't you feel bad about that passenger, who paid to reserve as seat which you then took? Not suggesting you should feel bad about the airline.

But why pay for it in the first place if you don't have a specific need? Why are people paying for specific seats on an aeroplane? Why does anyone need to book a seat that will mean that a family with small children are then forced to book to ensure they sit together? I don't understand why anyone would do this and why your paying should outweigh the need to a two yr old to sit with dm or dd.