To not want to have to pay RYANAIR yet another £40+ to avoid my family being separated?

[ElizaPickford]

Oh how I have hated dealing with this airline recently. They have conned me out of £30 which it took me 2 weeks and a lot of aggro to get back, they ripped me off with some stupid scratch card game at the time of booking and now if I don't pay a minimum of £40 my whole family could end up scattered across the plane. I hugely resent having to pay yet another trumped up fee, but my children have never flown before and are very young and obviously I don't want them to end up on their own or sat with strangers. (The kids will be fine but god help the rest of the plane. )

What would you do, anyone been in this situation?

Bearbehind- you don't seem to have read my post properly

What have I missed with the post I quoted?

m&s wouldn't stop you leaving until you'd paid £50 because you'd paid for the socks already- they hadn't put the price of them up after you bought them- you just want bunion pads as well.

When I called to make a free amend to the flight after booking (that I was entitled to) they told me the price had gone up and wouldn't amend my flight until I paid the alleged difference. They lied to me, I found out, they paid me back. That's what I'm talking about, they're bloody dodgy and if I was old or vulnerable they'd have taken me to the cleaners.

Easyjet do say on their website they will sit children next to their accompanying adult; Ryanair are much less clear.

I think, tbh, if Ryanair want families to pay to have children next to an accompanying adult, they should make the price for child seats more. Simple. It is not really an optional extra.

1. No one wants to sit next to your kid, the airline should seat you together, other folk should move so that you can

How about no, that is a very entitled view. Thankfully the one time this happened on a flight I was on (Thomson flight), it was the family who was being refused to be seperated that was offloaded. Why should other people move for you? Especially as they may have paid to sit together.

It's similar to the people who reserve aisle and window hoping no one will sit between them so they have a row to themselves.

Alcohol, crappy magazines, in-flight films, mush-onna-tray, polite and helpful staff, extra 'comfy' seats, blankets = frills
Carers being able to supervise dependents (child or adult)= actually a pretty obvious basic fucking necessity.

Hope that helps some of you who appear to be a little confused about what 'no frills' means.

Ryanair policy has changed since Feb2014,you can now reserve seats at no additional cost when checking in online, obviously as a group
the earlier one checks in the more availability of seating together

Ryanair are gone all relaxed and easygoing , two carry on bags allowed
no hardsell,, just play by their rules and it all goes smoothly

Woodlice - I agree, sitting carers and those they are caring for together is not a 'frill' - unfortunately, Ryanair do not agree - they treat it as an optional extra that you need to pay for.

I think that, at the very least, the low-cost airlines need to make sure that they are completely up-front about what is and is not covered by the basic seat price, and what the extras cost. Clearly Eliza thought that booking the seats together was covered by the ticket price (I hope I have understood you correctly, Eliza, and with the sock analogy you are saying that you were told that allocated seating was included in the price you paid when booking! only to find later on that it wasn't). I don't know if this was a misunderstanding, or if Eliza was deliberately misled, but it does suggest that Ryanair need to be clearer about the costs of their flights, and what is and is not included.

In an ideal world, allocated seating would be included in the basic seat price (maybe with an option to,opt out for a discount, if you don't mind where you sit) - but I am willing to bet that this would put the basic price up.

Yes, but intheend are you talking about a family with two parents being split or one parent being split from their children. These are different scenarios. There is no issue with mum and dad being split with children in different parts of the plane. There is an issue with one parent being split from the children completely.

Love the idea of sitting next to your tiny children on an aeroplane being a 'frill'. What next, paying extra for seatbelts or an emergency oxygen mask over your seat? mustn't give Ryanair ideas. There are some properly bonkers attitudes on this thread.

I think the bonkers attitude is at the airlines, surely? They are the ones who have included allocated seating in their list of things they charge extra for, not us.

Agree with allhail you don't have to pay just turn up early

1st 2 posters got it spot on. I always used to refuse to pay, even when DS was pre schooler.

We always ended up with parents separated, DS sitting with 1 of us. Which worked. Nobody seemed to mind

They don't charge extra though. Extra is for if you want adults or older kids to sit near each other. If you have small children, they will move people who have not paid for allocated seating so that the small children can sit next to a parent, because it is a basic safety requirement. But the fear that they might not (and the idea that you are being 'entitled' to expect it) drives people into paying when they don't need to. If you think you should have to pay for a basic safety requirement, then yes I think that is bonkers. Even Ryanair, in practice, tends to agree.

Maryz- you're not getting it. I made a minor error and they give you 24 hours grace to amend. I called to amend as flights were no use to me without amend. They said price had gone up and they wouldn't amend if I didn't pay. So I had to pay. But the flight hadn't gone up. It was a lie- I called them on it and they had to pay me back because they took it unlawfully.I was making the point that my whole experience with them has been bloody awful and they seem desperate to squeeze money out of you by fair means or foul.

I don't think it's transparent at all. Ryanair are deliberately obtuse about whether not being able to guarantee families sitting together means that they won't make any effort to seat children with at least one parent. My guess is that their system will (in the vast majority of cases) sit small children with one of their parents, just not necessarily sit the parents together. But they don't want you to know this.

It's not even that I mind paying the supplement. It's that it takes so long to find out what the true price is going to be that it makes price comparison really tedious. It's completely anti-competitive.

I know some people find flying with Ryan Air a PITA especially if you have young children with you but for me they have allowed me to indulge my passion for travelling especially to Eastern Europe and North Europe.
I can get a return flight to Poland or Norway cheaper than a taxi for a night out from Clitheroe to Manchester if I book in advance. Bloody love it!

this will not help the debate but others share your pain....
Spoilers - profane language, NSFW, please dont take it too seriously

Other people pay this charge if they want to be guaranteed seats together. If you have concerns you might not be seated together, it's simple, pay the charge. Why should you be treated any differently, children or no children?

If you arent alive to RyanAir's charging policy in general if not in the specifics then I can only assume that you have been sitting with your head in a bucket for the last 10 years.

In case you have missed it. With low cost air lines you get what you paid for. If you didnt pay for it then assume you wont get it. You have paid for tickets to sit on a plane. If you want that seat to be with other people then you have to pay extra for that.

Be under no illusion, in the event of an emergency adults trying to swim against the tide to get to their children will be pushed out of the way.