To not book reserved flight seats for us and the kids?

[LittlePudding1]

Hi, I have a 6 year old and a 3 year old and was under the impression that even if we weren't all sat together together on a plane they would sit me with 1dc and dh with the other but a couple of people have told me they can sit you anywhere. Surely they wouldn't sit a 3 year old away from a parent and next to a random stranger, would they?

Airlines will not change their systems until people force a law upon them. Don't get angry with the person asking you to move so they can sit next to their toddler... direct your anger at the airline and the legislation that allows this

Or don't get angry at all. Just politely say, "I'm sorry, I paid an extra surcharge to be seated with my family, so I'm not willing to swap"

There is no need for anger at anyone, really. Not even the airlines, because until there IS legislation (which I would welcome, it would save me £75 at least) then the airlines are just making money, like every other business in the world.

It would have been nice of the airline, but on this occasion the child in question was about 7 or 8 so it was more a want of the family than a safety issue for the airline.

crashdoll you're not really in a position to be calling other people twits...

The airlines are cutting back to the bone to make profits. It's starting to include safety, and I was wondering where this might end. I wasn't actually serious about the climbing wall you know?

Beyond this, it's a reasonable analogy. Looks like I need to spell it out... You are talking about leaving a 2-year-old to fend for itself for several hours unless their parent pays money. That's about as reasonable as asking a disabled person to pay for their wheelchair. Both a wheelchair user and a 2-year-old need reasonable adjustments made in order to fly safely.

I'd much rather argue with an airline than ask another actual human to pay me back for my seat. I suppose that's just another area we disagree on Clouds.

reasonable adjustments relates to the Disability Discrimination Act.

A 2 yo is their parent's responsibility.

But in the case of the wheelchair user they have NO choice, whereas the parents of the 2 year old DO have a choice, and chose not to.

Again until legislation is passed then as a parent you have to analyse the risk, if you think the risk is worth it, great. I don't, so I pay and if I've paid, I won't move.

The wheelchair user can pay for their wheelchair, just like the parents of the toddler. The issue is whether it is ethical for companies to behave like this.

No, we get that eve. You won't move. But you think it is fine to make a 2yo move. Or a 4yo. Undo their seatbelt, dump them in the aisle and basically tell them to go away.

Unconscionable behaviour.

I always thought the airline had a responsibility to sit children with a responsible adult, in case of emergency.

But I have just found this rather pathetic statement on the CAA (UK regulator of air travel) website:

^Families, children and infants

The seating of children close by their parents or guardians should be the aim of airline seat allocation procedures for family groups and large parties of children.

Young children and infants who are accompanied by adults, should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult. Children and accompanying adults should not be separated by more than one aisle. Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults. This is because the speed of an emergency evacuation may be affected by adults trying to reach their children.

Whenever a number of infants and children are travelling together the airline should make every effort to ensure that they can be readily supervised by the responsible accompanying adults.^

So, guidance for the airlines (which the likes of ryanair will ignore no doubt) rather than a requirement to comply with.

However, one could argue that Ryanair's seating policy is actually in direct contravention of this guidance. There is no boarding priority given to children, and last time I travelled with DD (under 2 so on my knee) we were the very last people to board both flights, despite being near the front of the queue. Each time I had to stop to pick something up/faff with the buggy etc, hoards of people just swept past me. Inevitable with a toddler really.

It makes a mockery of the "unaccompanied minor" policy that most airlines have for 5-14 yr olds. Why have staff looking after a 6yr old flying alone when there is a 3 yr old sitting away from their parents, and the staff couldn't give a monkeys?

italics fail

You have no guarantee of getting paid back from an airline though, and I'm not sure why an airline should be liable for it when the move doesn't need to be made for safety reasons.

What's wrong with asking an actual human to pay? I'd only expect it if I'd paid, and I'm and actual, real life human!

Given that lots of people on this thread have said this is a safety issue here is a solution:

If you have paid to sit with your DCs then you get to board automatically.

If you have chosen not to pay then the cabin crew hold parents and DCs back until everyone else has boarded. If there are seats together still available then on you go. If there arent then the call goes out to see if anyone will move. If no one does then parents and DCs have to wait until the next flight.

Sorry and all that, it is a safety issue.

I think that where it is inappropriate for children to sit without one parent (under 8, say) the airline should suck up the cost. If it's just a preference then people can negotiate I suppose.

I don't think that would be legal, worrysigh.

And I think the fact that you would hold families who have not paid for allocated seating behind everyone else who has not paid for allocated seating says quite a lot about where you are coming from.

Plus the airlines would never get on board with it.
They don't want to send flights out with empty seats, it's not cost effective.
The people who were left behind wouldn't get a seat on subsequent flights as they're fully booked too.
So basically it would end up being a levy on people with children, which I'm sure would not be legal.

No, we get that eve. You won't move. But you think it is fine to make a 2yo move. Or a 4yo. Undo their seatbelt, dump them in the aisle and basically tell them to go away

OK, once again for the hard of understanding. Differentname posted that her 4 year old DD would be: climbing all over, kicking seats, shouting, spilling her food & drink, ordering cokes and sunkists and generally being a pain in the arse. If she is doing all that then she is NOT wearing her seatbelt and is NOT distressed. THAT child I would consider a badly behaved horror and yes I would tell her to find her mother.

Impecunious posted directly afterwards laughing about how badly behaved her 2 year old would be and how I would have to put up with it. Of course I was going to give the same reply.

Had Differentname and impecunious not been so confrontational and entitled then maybe my response would have been different. But there is NO excuse for a parent to think it is funny that their child would be that badly behaved and ruin another passengers flight, simply so they didn't have to pay another few quid for selected seating.

Satisfied? Or will you leave it another few posts and lie embellish what I said again?

I posted before, why should the child's price be less than the adult's price? All the messing around at boarding, buggies in the hold etc dont come for free. It would seem sensible to me that the child's price might in fact be higher than the adult's price.

Have only read up to page 16.

I just booked flights with Ryanair as they are the only airline that flies to where my sister lives. Last year the only prebookable seats were the ones near the emergency exits so a child wasn't allowed to sit in them anyway. We got to the airport stupidly early, dp sat down while I stood for ages in front of the boards to spot the gate as it opened. We were 2rd in the queue. We got on the plane pretty early (no thanks to the people who charged past us and practically trampled the dcs aged 5 and 6 then on their way to the plane and up the stairs). We did get seats together but it was stressful and the same coming home.

Today when booking I noticed that just a few more rows than the emergency exit ones, were bookable. I'm travelling alone with the kids this time and had put off booking so far, simply due to the stress of the rush for seats. The extra £60 I paid today to have reserved seats near the back for both out and back journey, was the easiest £60 I have ever spent.

However, the bulk of seats on the plane were still unbookable, so if I'd left it another week or so we might still have had to be in the general rush for seats.

One point people are missing is that the budget airlines operate on quick turnaround times. The rush for seats on Ryanair is deliberate, it makes people get there early and makes them get on the plane, grab seats and sit down quickly. Also they tend to fill up the seats in rows going down from the doors - when seats are all allocated people move more slowly and block the aisles for people who need to get past them to other rows.

The seats on Ryanair are bloody cheap. If I was travelling alone or with dp I would not bother to book or pay priority boarding as it would not matter to me where we sit. But when I am travelling with the children, paying extra to avoid all the stress of the scrum is a no brainer for me.

If dp was coming with us I think I'd just book 2 seats, for one of us and ds2. The other parent and ds1 would risk the scrum.

Easyjet 2 years ago was awful for us, coming home it was just one big crowd at the gate. People with priority boarding shouting and trying to get through, people elbowing our children out of the way even though they were under 4 and we should have gone on after the priority people. I said since then I would never fly easyjet again so its good to hear that they are also allocating seats now.

From stories I've heard about planes missing departure slots due to people who arrived late and won't sit down because they are not next to their travellign companions, it looks like the airlines decided that planes full of unallocated seats is a bad idea.

On balance I am hoping I get to sit near Tomorrow than Different and her kids on the Aldi flight into hell.

You just don't get this sort of problem with BA, the Waitrose of flights

I didn't embellish anything.

You said you would take a 2yo out of it's seat, dump it in the aisle and tell it to find it's mother.

In that situation you wouldn't know where or who their parent was, or whether they had "an attitude" or not, so I don't see how that has any bearing on behaving that way to a child.

Why would you change the way you treat a child based on your perception of their parents? Who, in this case, you wouldn't have any idea about anyway.

Just bizarre.

If you ever find yourself sitting next to a 2yo or a 4yo and for whatever reason decide you want them gone, please will you consider calling a steward and asking them to remove the child rather than just sending it away.

I'm not entitled. I was not gloating. I was stating that my 2-year-old would be a nightmare seated alone - that's hardly rocket science is it?! And of course he'd bloody be distressed, I'd have thought that went without saying. If it isn't axiomatic in your head that a lone 2-year-old is going to go ballistic in all sorts of ways, I can only imagine that you haven't dealt with many 2 year olds recently. It's not funny - but I guess if the lone adult who hadn't paid for priority seating and had refused to move because he particularly liked seat 4b, and then found that he had to put up with a VERY loud 2-year-old wail - well I would certainly think there were some just deserts going on there. I was trying to inject some levity when musing about the hypothetical delights of letting someone else deal with him - you know, not being 100% serious. Do you really honestly think I'm actually going to be sipping cocktails entirely oblivious to my 2-year-old wailing in horror in another part of the plane? I'd be in bits.

And in what way are we lying? I'm not embellishing anything. You stated clear as day that you would put my 2-year-old out of his seat and send him off to find his mother. I can only hope you were also not being entirely serious.

In that situation you wouldn't know where or who their parent was, or whether they had "an attitude" or not, so I don't see how that has any bearing on behaving that way to a child

Yes I would, because they would already have asked me to move and I would have politely said no.

They wouldn't be that far away, because otherwise I wouldn't have been asked to move - the other seat would have to be close to mine, or there would be no point in asking me to move.

If you ever find yourself sitting next to a 2yo or a 4yo and for whatever reason decide you want them gone, please will you consider calling a steward and asking them to remove the child rather than just sending it away

I won't, because I choose to pay to select my seat with my family, so I can guarantee to be with them.

Why would they have asked you to move?
Why would they have to be sitting near you?

They could well be at the other end of the plane. Wherever the spare seats happened to be.
Not everyone goes around asking others to move Lots of people feel it is rude, and will wait and see if anyone offers and if not then that's that.

And your point still stands that if you don't like the attitude of the parents you will dump their child in the aisle and tell it to "find it's mother". No reason to think that a 2yo will be able to remember where on an aeroplane their carer is.