AIBU to expect to sit next to my child on a 10 hour flight

[soimpressed]

This year I have booked my first ever package holiday. I booked with what I thought was a good company and the holiday cost a lot of money. I was told I could check in 7 days before the flight and tried to do so but the system wouldn't let me check in. I tried several times with no success. It took 3 emails before the company finally sorted the problem out. When I finally got to check in online I found that I wasn't sitting next to my child. Everyone else has obviously been able to check in and there are no seats left together. My only option is to pay £150 each seat to upgrade. My DS is in tears about having to sit next to strangers. The company are refusing point blank to help. AIBU or do I just need to shell out the £300?

[Forago]

why shouldn't they? It's not about children - it's about group bookings. Same as when you book a table for eight at a restaurant you don't all have to sit at separate tables or pay more than a single diner to make sure that you don't. It's built into the restaurant's costs.

And they wouldn't be paying more - everyone would pay the same - what a seat on that plane actually costs - i.e not made to look cheaper than it actually is by a range of "extras" distributed unfairly about the cabin.

This is how air travel worked until Easy Jet and Ryan Air came along. And it worked better imo. People shouldn't think it only costs £19 to fly somewhere. Because it doesn't.

[LtEveDallas]

The restaurant analogy doesn't work because restaurant tables are moveable and don't come with seatbelts/oxygen/emergency exits.

Plus, again, unless ALL travellers fit the same box (no singles, no more or less than 4 in a group, all planes with twin seats), then some people are going to be unfairly disadvantaged - if the seats aren't cheaper/people selecting seats paying more, people wont book, planes will fly with empty seats, costs will go up again.

[Forago]

No, they won't, because decent booking systems keep up with bookings in real time. and seats are reserved for everyone who has currently booked on the plane per booking reference, which shows size of group, irrespective of whether they have paid extra for extra legroom, or chosen where they want to sit, or not.

As you find on British Airways, Air France, Quantas etc. Because they all use the same booking and reservations system.

[AnnieLobeseder]

LtEveDallas - what you apparently haven't considered is that many people don't go abroad "on holiday", we go to visit family. Neither DH nor I are from the UK. So that money can mean the difference between us seeing our parents or not, my DC knowing their family or not. It's not about a jolly to the seaside.

[CoteDAzur]

YANBU.

If told I have to sit behind my DD (8.5) & DS (5), I'd turn my Kindle on, ask for some wine with the food, and enjoy the flight. Until the passengers sitting next to them beg me to change places, that is

Tell your DS to start singing out loud and banging his head against the seat in front of him. That should be enough for stewardesses to find you adjacent seats in under a minute.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

The big difference with a restaurant, though Farago is that there is a constant cycling of availability in the restaurant - people who arrived early finish their meal and leave, and their table becomes available - so if a group arrives, and cannot be accomodated together immediately, then there's the possibility of them being accomodated later on, when other diners have left.

But on a plane, you all get on together, and all leave together, which makes the whole seat allocation thing very different.

Whenever we've flown with the dses, we have factored in either paying for seat allocations or for priority boarding, to the cost of the tickets. I think if you go into it with the knowledge that the advertised price is only a fraction of the actual cost, that there is a menu of extras that used to be included in the ticket price, but that now you have the option to decide which ones you want and which you can do without, and if accept that you are going to be paying a big whack more, once you have added on the extras that you choose, then you are less likely to be disappointed or frustrated.

To go back to the restaurant analogy - we used to have a table d'hote menu situation - you bought a ticket, and it entitled you to a baggage allowance, meal/drink etc - now you have an a la carte situation. Both have their merits - on one hand, for some people, it is easy to plan the costs of their holiday when they know that the ticket price includes all the things they want from their flight. On the other hand, some people like the option to have a cheaper flight by doing without some of the things that the all-in ticket price includes. If you can manage with just cabin baggage, you can save the cost of putting a case in the hold, for example, or if you don't mind where you sit, you can decide not to pay for pre-allocated seating or priority booking.

But if you decide to go for the cheaper option, it is naive to expect to get for free, all the benefits that people who have paid more are getting - you could compare it to going to the restaurant, paying for just a starter, and then insisting that you should be given a main course and dessert too, because those people over there have got a main course and dessert (because they have paid for them either via the a la carte or table d'hote options).

On threads like these, you often see stories of parents arriving on the aircraft and acting in a rude and entitled fashion, demanding that people who have paid to book a particular seat, give it up so that they can have it without having paid for it - that would piss me off mightily, and I would be very likely to refuse to move - not because I am a nasty person, but because I would resent the implication that I should cheerfully hand over however many quids-worth of prebooked seat without a please or a thank you - and without any guarantee that I would be reimbursed or that I would get a seat of similar quality to the one I had paid to book.

[tethersend]

"Do remember that having children is a lifestyle choice - if you don't want to pay to sit next to them then either don't have them or don't rake them on a plane!"

Hmm, but being a child isn't a 'lifestyle choice', and they are the ones who are vulnerable.

I'm surprised that anyone thinks it is ok for children to sit apart from their parents unless their parents pay extra, let alone a travel agent who presumably ensures that all their staff who work with children are police checked.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Cote d'Azur - if you did this, to blackmail me into switching my seats, I would use my scariest voice to tell your child to be quiet and sit still. And I would not move.

Would you tell your child to go and scream at another diner in a restaurant or kick their chair until that person gave your child the food off their plates, because you didn't want to pay for your child to have that food, but felt they were somehow entitled to it, despite your not having paid for it?

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Tethersend - no, being a child is not a lifestyle choice - and yes, children need to sit with their parents - but why is it the responsibility of strangers to ensure that children sit with their parents, if the children's parents don't take that responsibility themselves by paying the necessary cost? I take responsibility for my own children, why should other children be my responsibility too - why should I have to be MORE responsible than their own parents??

[CoteDAzur]

Blackmail you to switch seats?

You are welcome to my DC on a 10-hour flight. I hope you enjoy them very much, while I snore behind you on my own.

Please let's do this this summer. Can I interest you in a trip to New York?

[overthemill]

Some years ago my dd, DH and I travelled home from a grim holiday in the canaries (with Thomson). Dd had developed an illness on day 2 and we had to take her twice a day to hospital to be nebulise and get IV drugs. It was touch and go whether we could return on the day we had return flight and had to be cleared by doctor 3 hours before flight so huge rush to airport. This was in 2000 so before it was common to have mobile let alone laptop! When we got there, we couldn't get 2 seats together (dd under 2) and I sat next to very snotty woman who wouldn't swap seats with my DH (fair enough, her perogative and yes , she had got to airport in plenty of time). After about 20 minutes into flight she begged the flight attendant to let her move seats . Dd had screamed, wailed and vomited all over woman! And I didn't poke her to make her!!!! We had to take her to a and e as soon as we landed. Flight from hell.

But why oh why wouldnt that sill cow just move to start with? She was alone so no issue about being away from her own companions.

[ilovesooty]

I see Cote

Another parent who actually thinks it's acceptable to actively encourage childrento be disruptive in order to force single passengers to move from seats they may have paid to prebook. Charming.

[OnlyLovers]

I think it's quite clear that you tried to pre-select seats but couldn't because of a system error, which was the company's fault not yours. They then took ages to resolve it. I think the onus is on them to rectify it.

Write to head office and name and shame on Twitter/anywhere online you can, I say.

[Morgause]

I can't believe any parent would think it's ok to encourage bad behaviour because they are too tight to do the right thing.

Try that one on me and I'd probably tell the kid horror stories to make sure no one slept for the whole holiday.

[SocialNeedier]

We had this with Air India and 5 year old DSD. I basically stood in the aisle shouting with DSD crying loudly and DP doing his 'let's negotiate reasonably' routine with one of the cabin crew. Eventually some passengers travelling alone offered to move for us.

Throw a tantrum. That's my advice.

[LtEveDallas]

No Annie, I didn't take that into account because:

1. I was talking about myself when you took offence. I don't have family abroad that I wish to go and see.
   
2. The thread started about a package holiday flight
   
3. You said yourself "However, for some of us that extra 20 each means the difference between having a holiday or not. So how was I suppose to know that you weren't talking about flying on holiday?

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

CoteDAzur - my 'blackmail' comment was in response to this, from you:

"Tell your DS to start singing out loud and banging his head against the seat in front of him. That should be enough for stewardesses to find you adjacent seats in under a minute."

[Morgause]

Throw a tantrum to get your own way?

That's disgraceful in a child, let alone a grown woman. A shame you got away with it. But your DSD learned a valuable lesson, make enough fuss and you get what you want.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Damn - posted too soon. If I ended up sitting next to a child who was behaving nicely, I would interact with them a bit, and help open the odd sweetie bag or whatever, and I would definitely help that child if there was an emergency - but I wouldn't tolerate from them behaviour I wouldn't accept from my own children - and if I heard a parent telling them to behave badly, to force me to move seats, my arse would be glued into that chair, and the child would get a good telling off from me, and no further interaction (except in case of emergency).

[CoteDAzur]

"why is it the responsibility of strangers to ensure that children sit with their parents, if the children's parents don't take that responsibility themselves by paying the necessary cost?"

It is the responsibility of the airline to make sure that that a person in need of assistance sits with their carer. Unless they would prefer to take over that responsibility of dump it on the unfortunate passenger next to the person in need. That concern should come before paid seating.

By all means, stick all parents with small children in the back of the plane and ask them to pay up if they want to have wider, more comfortable seats away from the toilet and towards the front of the plane. But it is not reasonable to not seat a child with her parent on a 10 hour flight.

[tethersend]

"Tethersend - no, being a child is not a lifestyle choice - and yes, children need to sit with their parents - but why is it the responsibility of strangers to ensure that children sit with their parents, if the children's parents don't take that responsibility themselves by paying the necessary cost? I take responsibility for my own children, why should other children be my responsibility too - why should I have to be MORE responsible than their own parents??"


It should not be the responsibility of strangers; nor should it cost the parents more money. The airline should take the responsibility of seating children with their parents. It's not difficult.

[OnlyLovers]

I wouldn't tolerate from them behaviour I wouldn't accept from my own children - and if I heard a parent telling them to behave badly, to force me to move seats, my arse would be glued into that chair, and the child would get a good telling off from me, and no further interaction (except in case of emergency).

100%.

And Social, your behaviour was a disgrace.

[ilovesooty]

I agree Morgause - a shocking message to convey to children.

Before these threads I might have considered swapping to accommodate this situation. Having read them it will be a cold day in hell before I move for parents who refuse to pay for prebooking.

I'd have moved in a heartbeat for Juliet though. Just not for entitled parents who think tantrums are the way to get what they want.

[tethersend]

X post with Cote

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

That is absolutely correct, CoteDAzur, and in an ideal world, that is how it would be - but we have to operate in the world we have - and in that world, the airlines have decided to charge extra to pre-allocate seating, and people know this, but still decide not to pay, and to expect strangers to move, if necessary, to accomodate their family sitting together.

So, in the real world, people are expecting strangers to take more responsibility for their children than they are taking themselves - how is that fair or right?