To be so upset that a woman & her 2 children were given my (pre-booked online for an additional charge) plane seats?

[lalalady1971]

My DP and I flew to Cyprus last year on holidays. I'm a really nervous flyer but I get through it with mental preparation and don't want to let it stop me as we go away every year with my mum & dad, sister & husband and niece/nephew so it's a lovely get-together. (They live in different parts of the country so fly from different airports).

Part of my nerves-beating prep is pre-booking seats so I know exactly where we'll be sitting. I take a bit of time with this and look at the seats layout on the airline website, even down to the position of the window next to the seat so I'm definitely able to sit as calmly as possible without having to sit forward/twist my head backwards to see out (some seats have mainly plastic wall with the window further forward or back). This prob sounds very weird but part of it is extreme claustrophobia and being able to see outside/having a window really helps.

We paid a premium and pre-booked specific seats online, with extra legroom (my DP is 6ft 2) and a window seat with the window in the perfect position. All my mad requirements met so I felt ok! I also feel really self-conscious about my nervousness and sometimes retch a bit if I start feeling particularly anxious, so I like to be "cocooned" and safe in my window seat, hidden from others.

Soooo (sorry for such a long preamble!!), we get on the plane with our boarding passes and seat numbers (check-in acknowledged that we had booked our seats online already) only to find a woman and her 2 children (they looked about 8 & 10) sitting in our seats....with boarding cards with her original seat numbers scribbled out and our seats written on.

The stewardess approached and curtly asked what was the matter. I explained that there seemed to be some mistake as I'd pre-booked these seats. She went off to check and came back saying that someone had presumably gone through the seating plan at the gate and moved us as the woman had not pre-booked seats but needed to be seated with her children and the airline had to allow for that, so she had two new seat numbers for us.

I politely explained that I was a very nervous flyer and had specifically booked these seats (and paid extra for them!) so was there any way she could ask along the rows around if a different 3 people would mind moving as there were lots of gaps further down the plane but she said no, they'd updated the computer system at the gate so there was no way round it. (This made me feel even worse as I immediately thought, oh god it's so they know who's in which seat if the plane crashes and people die!!). At this point the woman in the seat stood up and said "Look, can't you see that I have children?! Obviously we need these seats more than you!", I was a bit taken-aback but said that I'd actually paid for these seats and if she was really that worried why didn't she pre-book seats so that they were guaranteed seats next to each other. She said she didn't need to, why on earth should she pay extra when she had children, the airline had to seat them together anyway. Followed by large amounts of smugness and smirking.

The stewardess then started tutting, saying the captain would go mad if we missed the take-off slot so we just needed to get into our seats. Oh god. Our new seats. It was my worst nightmare. She led us to the two seats halfway down the plane right next to the large exit doors. No window, just a door to my right with multiple emergency signs (and a bloody key in it with a massive red label on it saying "REMOVE AFTER TAKE-OFF" which stayed in for the whole flight!! (I was too mortified to ask anyone if it should really still be in the lock during the flight!). No seats in front of us so I felt massively exposed (and no seat-back for my crash position!!!), just a big gap then the next row. (Couldn't fault the leg-room though!). Plus a weird gap to my right as the two seats were slightly off-set so the window seat behind me had a bit of a half-gap in front of it. Through this gap, every 10 minutes or so, came a small child belonging to the couple sitting behind us. But the gap was a bit tight so the little girl was grabbing onto my arm-rest/arm to haul herself through, stepping on our feet as she came cackling past and grabbing my DP's knee to fling herself round the corner back into her parents' row. After an hour of this I turned to the couple and said "I'm sorry to be a pain but it's actually really annoying, d'you mind stopping her doing this" and they just looked at me (through the 20 mini wine bottles) and said it was keeping her quiet and it was a long flight for a little child so no, they couldn't.

Arghhh!! Dreadful experience. I felt really exposed and really anxious for the whole flight. Just horrible.

On a final note, the stewardess delivered my DP's pre-booked/paid meal to our original seats and the bloody woman took it and ate it!! My DP enquired as to where his meal was and, after 10 mins of him explaining what had happened with the seats (different stewardess!) she said she'd taken his meal to the original seat and it was accepted! She agreed to bring him a meal, but it had to be the vegetarian option now as they'd run out of standard meals...I was sorely tempted to say something to the woman at the baggage travelator thingy at the other end but by that point I was a bit of a wreck and couldn't be arsed with anything other than a large glass of wine!! (And she was still throwing the smug smirks my way so I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of showing I was bothered...)

I emailed Monarch when we got home and received a template email back saying, basically, tough shit, read the small print, we have the right to move you, this woman had children!! Yep, sorry about the meal but it's easily done as meals are allocated to seat numbers, not names and we have the right to change your meal, that's on the small print too.

We had a lovely holiday but we're off again in October to Turkey, again with Monarch (limited airline choice for date/time from our airport) and I'm utterly paranoid that this may happen again. Wonder if I should email Monarch in advance....or am I just over-reacting and being unreasonable??!

(And finaaaaally! I was pretty upset at that woman. I like to think if that were me I'd at least acknowledge the unfairness of the situation and say to the stewardess to be fair she has pre-booked and paid extra for these seats and is a nervous flyer, couldn't you just ask along the rows if anyone else would be happy to change seats? Or AIBU??!)

I'm a pretty confident, happy-go-lucky person in real life, it's just flying that turns me into a nervous wreck....maybe I just need to grow a pair!!

i would have resolved the situation before i got to the airport. if the airline didn't have such a policy i would pay.

Sounds fair enough to me.

the OP has not been back yet to answer about the extra legroom seat but not by emergency exits, I'm a frequent flyer and i haven't ever seen that (but then I'm not looking that closely)

Look on the Monarch site and Kevin George , the managing director,seems to be the person you need if you read his job description. Write him a personal letter outlining your experience and why you were unhappy with it. As long as you are polite and reasonable it always pays, in my experience.

If you are a family of 4 it is perfectly reasonable to put them in twos if they haven't bothered to prebook.

Hi all, wowsers that's a lot of comments!

To the person accusing me of being far too "entitled", I'm not quite sure how, as someone who pre-booked and paid extra to reserve certain seats (an option offered by the airline), I'm acting more entitled than someone who decided to not pre-book, not pay any extra, and rely on the airline/others being willing to give up their seats so they could sit together?! And I really don't appreciate the racist slur, so keep your slice of snide to yourself thanks very much.

To those asking about the madness of using Monarch again, it was a measured decision and not taken lightly, but my two options were EJ and Monarch and at that point I didn't realise that EJ had changed their seating system so you could reserve seats. We had flown with Monarch the year before and all had gone ok with my reserved seats on that flight so weighing it up I figured I was unlucky to end up in this situation for the Cyprus flight, but if I took steps this time to maybe let them know I'm a nervous flyer then perhaps that could flag something by our names to avoid seat changes if at all possible. One of the MN-ers made a brilliant suggestion of a GP letter reinforcing this so it's been immeasurably useful asking your opinions.

To those who say don't fly, I know where you're coming from. I'm a bit of a moany cow doing something I don't need to do if it makes me feel that bad. But I'm also not willing to let a stupid, irrational fear stop me from doing something I really want to do, so I've done my best to develop my own coping strategies to manage it. It was a horrid situation for me but I got on that flight and managed to deal with everything thrown at me so for that I think I did ok! I was obviously having a massive moan on here, (!!) but also wondering if there was anything else I could do to avert a similar situation in October and got some really supportive and practical responses.

The seats I'd reserved were extra legroom at the front of the plane, there are a few rows of these, then the exit row seats where the doors are, then the rest is standard legroom. Not sure if this woman was originally in the exit row seats but I'm pretty sure there are only two seats each side by the doors (the other two were taken) and there were three in her party so I think it's prob more likely that she just hadn't pre-booked seats, turned up to check-in after us (we were one of the first) and they reshuffled us to accommodate her. Or she'd been given three separate seats at check-in and then requested seats together at the gate so the reshuffle happened there....she and two children were in the seats when we got there, and that's the first we knew of it....!!

Many thanks for finding that for me exotic, I'll definitely write to him!

Well done, LALa, good response, just ignore the idiots, you're in the right and I think you've done very well both on the flight and on this thread!

To be fair to everyone, the airline is at fault by operating a "pay extra for allocated seats which we can take away from you if we decide". It's a pretty crap system, and means that people like the OP who have particular, non-obvious reasons for certain seats lose out.

OP, YANBU, you should complain again to Monarch explaining why their initial response was inadequate.

I think flyers with children should have to Pre-select their sears to ensure they are seated together, but not pay a fee to do so (actually no-one should have to pay, it's a stupid stealth charge).

And for the record, I've flown loads of times on planes with extra leg room but not by the emergency exits - the first row of economy in the middle section is the only place a tall DH and small children can comfortably travel together.

We flew with Monarch many years ago, it was a poor service then with a frozen bun and a kit kat fot the in-flight "meal".
Never again.

I have every sympathy with you, lalalady. You should not have been moved for the stroppy mare and her kids and I'm disgusted that the staff were so unsympathetic once you explained your reasons for prebooking.

Like you, I'm an anxious flier (claustrophobia) but I refuse to let my irrational fear stop the rest of the family enjoying holidays abroad. It's just DH and I now and mostly we holiday in the UK - from choice.

However, when we venture abroad we prebook extra legroom seats, despite being only average height. This is partly because of my anxiety but mainly because I have joint problems so need to sit with my legs stretched out as far as possible.

On our last budget flight a man of giraffe proportions hadn't booked extra legroom and was protesting to the staff that his allocated seat wasn't suitable and demanded they ask people to move. The staff asked those of us in the legroom seats if we were prepared to swap and we all declined.

He really kicked off and shouted at us that we should move as he went past. The chap beside us told him he should have prebooked so it was tough. Then the staff said he'd be off the plane if he didn't sit down and shut up, which he did. That's how staff should be in such circumstances.

calopene, white girls' problems? Are black women not allowed to buy plane tickets? Too expensive? Just like Oprah W was told about that handbag?

good OP, write to everyone you can, they shouldn't be able to get away with it with some smallprint. At the very least they should have offered you a refund and make their smallprint about moving you from your seat BIG, red, flashing letters so that people know what they might be in for...(and hopefully reject using their services).

YADNBU. There is no point airlines offering the option of paying extra for pre-booked seats if they are not going to honour it. Airline staff should have moved people who had not pre-booked seats to accommodate the woman with children. But equally it was not her fault, however smug she may have been. Responsibility lies clearly with airline staff. I once paid extra for 'speedy boarding' with Easyjet before discovering how pointless it was. There were no seat allocations at all so it was first come first served on the plane and speedyboarding means you are the first batch allowed on the plane - but only a very short time before everyone else. If all the speedyboarders moved quickly down the aisle and into seats out of the way there might be an advantage but given how long it takes people to stand in the aisle sorting their belongings before stashing all the hand baggage (all largish items because of course you pay extra for hold items with Easyjet....) there isn't. So we found ourselves standing waiting in the aisle for people to get organised while everyone who had not paid extra for speedy boarding got on the other door at the back of the plane and filled up the seats behind the disorganised speedy boarders.

Whilst I sympathise, we recently flew with our 4 kids, two of whom have Tourette's syndrome - 14 and 11 years.

Because of a flight cancellation we were nearly seated separately from our kids on our new sets. This prospect was extremely stressful, because whilst my children cope well with their illness, having to sit beside a stranger for hours at a time would have been torture for them. My children, not the other passenger.

My children would have suppressed their tics so that they could look normal for everyone else's benefit. They find this physically and emotionally exhausting. When we sit together they feel comfortable enough to let out little tics in private, and keep the illness under control.

The stress of flying could easily make Tourette worse. I think it would be kinder of you to have been sympathetic to the man you mention early on, rather than thinking only about yourself.

seats, not sets

We had pre- booked and paid for seats together on our original flight. A fire at Heathrow meant our connecting flight was cancelled and we then missed our main flight.

yabu - not the mum's fault for the seat situation or the meal. blame the airline.

Totally agree roses: I raised that ages ago but it's been lost ironically in the sympathy for the op's issues. Understanding can be given as well as asked for.

I did see your post nerfmother, I don't have Tourette's but can imagine that being on a plane, sitting next to a stranger and trying to contain tics must be excruciatingly difficult

Op you have my sympathy.
If you / power of mumsnet wants something done i would suggest writing to the civil aviation authority. Their guidelines state www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=2207&pageid=12706 that airlines should ideally seat parents together with children. If airline seat charging policies are preventing this from happening the caa is the only body who can force a policy change and should therefore be informed every time their guidelines are beached.
I would also suggest anyone traveling with children prints the guidelines and refers to them whenever they are breached.

Thanks 3

Monarch are shit, that is all.

14 young guys who all have to sit together - do they need to hold each others hands or something. sounds a bit wet. if i was travelling without my kids, i'd have no problem moving to help a parent with kids or a nervous adult etc.

the greedy airlines create this chaos - blame them.

BlingBang, None of the 15 lads, including DS1, who sat together are wet. They were all going on holiday together, their rooms in the hotel were together' they booked the flight together and when they checked in at the earliest available opportunity they paid to have their seats together. What's wet about that?

And why should they move to accomadate someone who couldn't be bothered to book and pay for their seats to be together? I wouldn't move. I booked, and paid for, my seats in February we traveled in July.

BlingBang it WAS the woman at fault for the meal. On an airline which doesn't provide meals as standard, when the stewardess brought it to her she should have said "sorry, that's not mine, I didn't order a meal". You know, like a normal honest person would?

Thank you nerfmother & power of three.