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?

we should force the airlines to address by stippong this stupid bloody pay extra policy.

and if the seatbelt sign was on?

*stopping

"However children in distress want their mum, who should pay to prebook in order to guarantee the seat which addresses her child's needs."

No, the airline should allocate seats to ensure that distressed children get to be comforted by their parents. This, along with children's safety, is a basic need, and should not be charged as if it were a luxury extra.

STD! i HAVE paid for the seat.

and no, but i wouldnt expect a taxi driver to charge me another $10 to sit in the same car as my kids.

Cote I said what I said because you appeared to take pleasure in the prospect of your child inconveniencing others.

I still don't see why in a budget airline pricing structure childless travellers should sick up the cost of guaranteed seating for families.

Single travellers get royally screwed though single supplements as it is.

SDTG - do you always unquestioningly, slavishly do what companies tell you to do, like a good little capitalist? Do you never question their terms and conditions as potentially unfair?

" But i wont be blackmailed into shelling out extra for a seat i have already paid for."

Faulty logic, sorry. You are not being denied the seat you have paid for. You have paid to have a seat on the plane (or a given number of seats) - you have NOT paid to have a specific seat or seats - you will get however many seats you have paid for on that plane, and you will (barring other problems) be flown to your chosen desination - so you are not being blackmailed into paying extra for something you already have.

You are choosing not to pay for an optional extra, and then insisting that you are ENTITLED to that optional extra anyway!!

If a meal on the flight is an optional extra, and you decide not to pay for it, are you going to kick off if you don't get the meal, 'because it is your right to be fed?^ It is exactly the same. Allocated seating is (sadly) an optional extra - if you don't want to pay for it, that's fine, but you have to take the risk that you may not end up sitting where you want to sit. If you choose to take that risk for your child, why should other people, who have made a different choice, have to ameliorate the consequences of your poor choices for your child?

i dont think you can compare stealing to not paying extra.

recently i paid for a concert. should i expect to pay extra when i get there to make sure i amsat with my dh?

or perhaps i should pay extra for a bed in the hotel room?

Katnipp - if I disagree that wholeheartedly with a company's terms and conditions, I will not purchase their goods or services. And there is no need to be nasty.

It's like buying economy yellow label bread, and expecting hand milled organic fancy-schmancy French flour loaves innit?

And then "kicking off " because you've, erm, got what you paid for.

No, Differentname - you have paid for A seat, not a specific seat.

"I still don't see why in a budget airline pricing structure childless travellers should sick up the cost of guaranteed seating for families."

I agree. There is no reason that airlines cannot seat children and parents together without charging extra.

But, tethersend if that seat guarantee is factored into the basic cost of tickets the airlines will pass that cost on to other passengers. They probably shouldn't but they will.

X post there sorry.

You see, I remember, back in the dark ages, when it cost me a month's wages to go and see my Mum. Now, even with the optional extra of priority boarding yada yada, it costs me less than a new pair of shoes.

Just because something "used to be" doesn't necessarily make it some kind of perfection.

"Allocated seating is (sadly) an optional extra"

Why should it be?

This is a policy which leaves children very vulnerable. I think all passengers should be challenging it, not accepting it as the status quo when it is not normal practice on other forms of transport.

Actually, the majority of people I see on Ryanair flights who pay for priority boarding are childless.

The screeching kids and lummocky teenagers are invariably the last to get on and then stand whining in the aisle waiting for their entitlements to be delivered.

But the absolute worse are the middle aged couples where one has the aisle and the other the window and her kindle gets the seat in the middle. I always do a few hail marys that a vomiting drunk chooses to sit in the middle when that happens.

"But the absolute worse are the middle aged couples where one has the aisle and the other the window and her kindle gets the seat in the middle. I always do a few hail marys that a vomiting drunk chooses to sit in the middle when that happens."

"I still don't see why in a budget airline pricing structure childless travellers should sick up the cost of guaranteed seating for families."

There is no cost in prioritising the seating arrangements of a child with at least one parent, except maybe the use of a few brain cells.

Are there 10 children on a plane? First you put them all next to one parent in the back of the plane. Then you open the rest of the seats for booking. If the other parent wants to sit with his family, then you make them pay. If they are fine sitting apart, they sit apart.

The point you are spectacularly missing is that it is the child's right to sit next to their carer because they can't be expected to care for themselves and the stranger sitting next to them can't be expected to care for them instead of their parent, either.

It is unbelievable that the few airlines who persist in this money grabbing scam have managed to convince some of you that what they are doing is perfectly fine.

There is no reason that airlines cannot seat children and parents together without charging extra

There may be no reason tethers, but they do charge, and whilst they do, as parents we have to make a choice - do we pay up or not?

If we pay up, fine, not an issue, other passengers need to accept that paid up passengers won't move.

If we don't pay up, fine, not an issue, but we need to accept that we might not be sitting with our kids - and that was our CHOICE and one that we consciously made.

Maybe, just maybe, if every passenger from now on refused to pay then the airlines might change their pricing policy - but for me it's not worth the risk. If the airline calls my bluff and sits me away from my DD I wouldn't fly - and I'd lose even more money. I'm not taking that risk where my DD is concerned, because she doesn't deserve it.

Whenever we have travelled with our DC we have never pre-booked seats. Have flown with Thomson as well as other budget airlines too. We have always just turned up to the airport, checked in early and have never once not been sat together. We've had 3 seats together and one over the aisle, 2 in front and 2 behind, even 2 and 2 somewhere else. But each DC has always had an adult next to them. DC are now teenagers and the same applied last summer to and from Spain, when they could have legitimately been sat apart.

This whole pre-booking thing is just another way of making money. It will be fine - just turn up early and ask politely at check in for seats together. There is bound to be some flexibility as not everyone will have pre-booked seats me so it is highly likely that there will be two seats together somewhere on the aircraft. If you have a smartphone/tablet, download the Seat Alerts or Seat Guru apps and if Thomson are one of the arlines it covers, you should be able to input your flight details and it will show the plane configuration and the seat already booked.

Do you go round assuming you are entitled to other stuff you haven't paid for, differentnameforthis?

My comment was no "nastier" than yours, above, SDTG

Sometimes a whole industry needs to be taken on and challenged, it isn't just a matter of individual choice whether to do something.

"you have paid for A seat, not a specific seat."

Sure. A seat next to my child. Any seat next to my child, anywhere on the plane.

Unless you are volunteering to take care of him, in which case I will stop arguing against you right now.

ProudAS, please don't use my argument on one topic and pick it apart for not holding water on another, completely unrelated topic.

Young children on their own are vulnerable. Whether they are quiet, loud, chatty, quiet, have SEN or not. They are vulnerable.

I cannot contemplate thinking that a scared and crying five, six, or nine year old should suck it up because their parents would not or could not pay extra money.

That's just odd.

Why is it odd and why are the topics unrelated? Dare say there's some reason obvious to the neurotypical majority but I've got autism and you're challenging me as if I've done something wrong.

A vulnerable adult is just that - vulnerable. the vulnerability may not be so obvious as with a child but that doesn't lessen it.

There was a thread on here about a passenger with severe anxiety who carefully chose and pre-booked a specific seat where she would feel as calm as possible. She then got booted out of for a woman who hadn't pre-booked and 'needed to sit with her children'. I find it disgusting that a vulnerable person could be treated like this and was shocked that some MNers sided with the mother. Children may be vulnerable but treating another vulnerable person like this in order to accommodate them is not the answer.

I think the MN jury would agree that a wheelchair user needs the designated space on a bus more than a child in a buggy. Why is it so different when it's an aircraft seat with the child's parent seated one side and a vulnerable adult's carer seated the other?

I'm slightly amused that passengers who have paid through the nose for a specific seat may find themselves sitting next to a...a...a...CHILD!