that airlines charge you extra to sit together!?!?

[Dollygirl2008]

I mean, after a totally shitty year, I have scraped the money together to take my DC away for a weeks holiday to Menorca- possible the last foreign holiday we will have for a long time. And now, the sodding, well reputable tour operator want more money for us to sit together!?!? I mean, do pepper early do this!? Are they really going to split us up (DC is 7)??

Interested in others views or experience, thanks

I wonder if it's legal? Sounds like unintended consequence of a policy designed to affect adults

Perfectly legal. Check out the CAA guidelines posted earlier

(And good god no to a Mumsnet campaign - if you 'won' do you really think the airlines would take the hit on their profits with a smile, or would they simply raise their prices for everyone to cover the shortfall?)

Passremarkable.. It does go against industry guidelines but is not actually illegal.. The last flight I was on during school holiday season nearly missed its slot while the poor flight attendants tried to sort things.. At the very least airlines should make it abundantly clear at point of booking what the pre booking charges are for (ie to sit together at all rather than sit together in specific seats).

Yes it was very expensive. There was no in flight entertainment. But kids would be taken up to see the cockpit and talk to the Captain. And even in economy, you always got alcohol included. I remember the boiled sweet as well being brought round on a platter.

Ruthio66 i'd tell your child to go find mommy. I'd help with seatbelt and that is all, nothingelse.
If you can't be bothered to think of their safety then you can't expect a stranger too.
I have headphones that go to a very high volume and very strong pills so not a chance would your child bother me, as for dh he scares a lot of people just by appearance
No way would i give up my seat, unless ofcourse you would help me up and down, to and from the toilet, administer my medication, generally calm me and stop me having a panic or asthma attack?
No? Then why would i do the same for your child?

Or you could say it is unfair of the parent to be unwilling to pay the necessary fee to sit with their child, pasremarkable, and to expect someone who has paid for allocated seating to give it up.

Re. your question about legality - there are no laws, as far as I am aware, about seating children with their accompanying adult - though there are guidelines.

Re. your 'families paying extra' comment - it is down to the current pricing model.

In the past, you paid a high price for your air fare, but your hold baggage, allocated seating and meal were included, whether you wanted them or not.

Now, in the budget model, the basic airfare is much, much lower, and you only pay for the extras that you want. If you want allocated seating, baggage allowance etc within the price of the ticket, it will be higher - but as a previous poster says, that may not be much more (or could be less) than buying the budget fare and all the add-ons.

But if you don't want the extras, or you are happy to take the risk of being sat separately from the people you're travelling with, you can travel much more cheaply than you ever used to be able to do. So families and others who want to travel together are not paying extra, but those who can be more flexible are getting a discount/more of a discount than the first group.

Does no one understand economics?

*The least I've seen is about £6, and it's often more than that. And that's £6 per person, per flight, so a family of 4 is looking at an extra £48 and some airlines/routes charge a lot more than that - someone has mentioned £200 to pay for their holiday, which is a lot extra and not fair to call someone cheapskate because they don't want to pay it.

If you've booked your holiday and sorted your budget, it's a bit of a shock to find these added fees at check in, *

In the first place it is very easy to ascertain fees in advance. If you are shocked then that's on you, not the service provider. Do you buy other things without finding out the price, and then complain about it?

In the second place, if you can't budget for the entire cost of the trip, then I guess you can't afford the trip, eh? Why should anyone else subsidize you and your offspring so that you can get the holiday you feel entitled to?

Would you expect a beef roast at the supermarket for the price of a sausage? And tell the cashier to charge the difference to the person in line behind you?

There is a cost to sitting together. Accept it and pay the cost. If you choose not to, hoping to bully your way into adjoining seats, then you are the scamster, not the airline.

(all "you" general, not directed to any one poster.)

So all you people who refuse to pay on principle, or don't think parents should be charged, what if they went back to the model of including everything, for a much higher price, and then gave the discount to people who were willing to take the chance on being separated from their family/seated alone - would you voluntarily sign up for that discount to make it cheaper? Take the chance, but then argue that you mustn't be separated, if it doesn't go your way and you do get separated?

Spot on, Lea!

To put it another way - would people go into a restaurant and order a dish that came without vegetables and potatoes, and then expect to have the veg that people at other tables had ordered and paid for?

Lealavender you miss the point. Very few parents want to sit beside their toddler or small child for a long flight. But a toddler or small child needs a parent or responsible adult to sit beside them. It is the airlines that are entitled by saying their profits come before the needs of vulnerable passengers.

No, you miss the point. Commercial airlines exist to make profits, or try. Few do for any sustained period of time since the dawn of aviation.

Companies do not exist to be nice, to smooth the way for consumers or to care for the needs of "vulnerable passengers." They exist to provide goods and services as profitably as possible in order to provide returns to shareholders. Good customer service can enhance profits but that doesn't mean they are obliged to cater to every consumer demand or every perceived need on the part of a fraction of their paying customers. Clearly they have decided that they get better outcomes from selling window and aisle seats to the highest bidder than from automatically giving them to groups on demand. If you want a block of seats, pay for it. Just like the rest of us do.

It is the PARENTS who should be caring for the needs of vulnerable children and if that means purchasing the appropriate level of service, so be it. Why do parents expect to be given this free of charge? If they are separated from their child it's because they fell down on the job, bigtime, not because the service provider's menu of fees and services is inappropriate. Don't like it, don't fly.

I fly a lot. Can I just pass on two bits of advice on seating:

• if you want to convince a lone traveler to swap seats with you, make sure that you are asking someone from a row behind the seat you are offering. Nobody wants to sit at the back of the plane, so someone may take the opportunity to move further up, and get out of the aircraft more quickly on landing. (Yes it's childishly competitive, but that's human nature).

• if you are booking seats on an aircraft with a 3-4-3 seat combination, eg where seats are numbered ABC DEFG HIJ, and you are travelling in a group of 4, or as a couple, you should book seats A and C, and leave B empty. No one likes the middle seat, so if the plane isn't at full capacity, it may well remain empty, in which case you've got extra space on the flight. If someone is unfortunate enough to bag it, they will gladly swap with you or DH for an aisle or window seat, and you will be no worse off than if you had booked two adjacent seats in the first place.

Also, if you have any hope of getting upgraded to business/first, don't request a special meal on your booking. They may not have a meal on board that meets your requirement so won't upgrade you.

Beside all this, I thought Fish's analysis was spot on.

In many many years of flying, never ever paid for together seats, never ever had to sit separately. It's just a money spinning exercise by airlines. Don't bother.

'Don't bother' is good advice, falange - provided people don't then kick up a stink when they don't get the seats they want or think they deserve.

yes, nostalgia for the good old days. Planes routinely half empty - I once was one of two passengers on a 737 between Dallas and Detroit. It was very common to get an entire row to oneself and stretch out.

Loved having a drink and a smoke aloft. On overseas flights real china, cloth napkins, silver and crystal, a butler on the Pan Am flight carving a prime rib of beef right at our seats, hot moist towels and slippers. Not getting suspicious looks if you walked around to stretch your legs.

The chaotic cattle cars of today are the price we pay for fares that are a fraction of what they were in the good old days. Personally I do wish it would get more expensive - it was more fun then. People appreciated the privilege and didn't show up looking like they just cleaned out the garage or rolled out of bed, and very few were noisy or ill-behaved. That ilk was on Greyhound buses back then.

If it's very easy to find out fees, can someone post links please. I've looked at jet2, ryanair and monarch, and all I can find is 'from £4' which isn't particularly helpful as I don't know how far they go up to and I don't think they actually tell you until you are booking your flight which makes it hard to compare costs.

All I know is that we paid £6 pp from Malta to Liverpool on Ryanair last year so we could check in before we set off instead of while we were there.

I suspect these £4 pp are short routes from somewhere like London to Paris or Amsterdam, which doesn't help you work out the cost from Glasgow to Lanzarote, apart from you should expect that it is probably 2 or 3 times as much.

On EasyJet, when I booked about 2 months ago, it was £3, £6 or £9, depending on the seat. A window seat well in front of the wing was £9. I think exit aisles were mostly £6. I got window seats, just in front of he wing on the way out. I think I'm so new here behind the wing next week. I only paid £3 for each one.

ive never paid for seats, always ended up sitting next to my husband. Maybe it's more risky with more than 2 of you? We check in the recommended 3hrs ahead too. Hope you get to sit together.

The last flight I was on during school holiday season nearly missed its slot while the poor flight attendants tried to sort things

Well I'd be pretty pissed off if that happened because someone couldn't be bothered to book and pay for a seat with their little darlings and were creating a ruckus which meant the flight was delayed.

I don't get what is unfair about this. I used to pay for my lot through inflated airfare prices years ago. Now, flights are cheap and if mine were younger, I would take pot luck and not kick up a stink OR pay and sit together, depending on their age etc.

When my DF was fairly immobile and couldn't walk far, I took him on a flight. I paid to sit next to him because I wanted to look after him. I'd do the same with my young kids, there's no difference, yet posters are happy to dump their kids elsewhere.

Airlines show every step of the way what seats will cost, especially low cost carriers.

I flew EJ to Bristol earlier this month. Yeah, it was £3 for an ordinary seat. I booked a middle one for me and a window one for DD2. Still cheap.

EBear yes I've just paid £3 for me and DH on Easyjet too and I ain't moving for anyone! It's a redeye flight and I want to fall asleep on him. If you're so tight that you won't shell out £12 for a family of 4, that's your problem!

Ironically though from a business model point of view, if one budget airline now bucked the trend and promised NOT to charge extra to choose seats, and guaranteed all under 12s would be next to at least one adult on the same booking, they would probably attract a lot of extra business from families!

If it's just 2 of you I wouldn't bother to book seats personally. Just make sure you check in as soon as on-line check-in opens.

Just travelled on two very busy flights with DH and DS, didn't book seats, didn't even bother to check in early, no issue with sitting together.

I won't pay for extras on principle. The price of an airline ticket should as a basic minimum include seating arrangements that are safe - young children being separated from parents could be a safety hazard in an emergency; it risks delaying the evacuation of a plane in the event of an accident.

I think the business model is thoroughly dishonest and that if more people refused to be blackmailed into buying extras then the airlines would have to rethink it. And if it causes delays this is entirely the greedy airlines fault.

Ps roussette.. The flight I'm thinking of was only just after these new charges had become common place.. And part of the problem was that the seating allocation had breached the company's own policy on children sitting separately to parents.. Luckily everyone on board had their holiday heads (as opposed to grumpy pants!) on, people shuffled around and I'm pretty sure no ones holiday was ruined.

Ooooh I might 'forget' to pre book seats this year. When we go away I'll be far too pregnant for DD to sit on my lap so she will have to stay with her dad the whole time. If I can get a seat away from DH at the opposite end of the plane that would be perfect

But airlines aren't greedy. Their margins are tight. Their prices are less than 20 years ago. They have enabled people to take advantage of air travel when years ago they just couldn't afford it. I don't see what's dishonest about it at all.

Where does it stop? You say children should be guaranteed to be sat by their parents. So should my dear old Dad be guaranteed to be sat by me? He would have struggled without me sat next to him. What about the passenger who is terrified of flying and needs to sit by her DH? Any of those could be a safety hazard and being a parent with children on a flight doesn't trump those needs.