thinking I should have been seated next to my three-year-old on this flight?

[nappyrat]

Cheap (orange) airline. Normally v good when travelling with kids - speedy boarding, say they'll sit you with kid/s etc.

Flew out recently & they said a 'technical error' had mistakenly sat me in a different row(!!) to my 3 year old. They fixed it on board (after much grumbling by several passengers about not moving from seats they've paid extra to book to sit together (fair enough!)). But fixed, fairly stress free.

Return flight today, I was sat across the aisle from DS. Their handling agent told me that this is considered 'sat together'?! Erm...really?! Anyway, handling agent refused to seat us together. Cue quite a bit of 'discussing' with them why this was not on IMO. No budging. Decided to leave it & ask the flight crew when we boarded. Who eventually sorted it - v kind older couple agreed to move seats.

Before I let loose with said orange airline's customer services, AIBU to think that sorting across the aisle from a 3 yr old is not appropriate?! DS was wailing, I had to bend across aisle to comfort, there were good chunks of time during boarding when I couldn't see DS because ppl stood in between us in aisle. Just bloody stressful quite frankly. And not what I'd expect from this - or to be bloody honest - any - airline.

Opinions please mumsnet!

YANBU, but those budget Airlines fail to use common sense IMO.

Clearly a way to get more money from passengers.

Quite frankly by the time you pay for check in baggage and booked seating.... you might as well fly with a decent Airline that do online check in.

I've done a couple of flights with Ryanair for work this weekend and this exact conversation was being had while we were queuing to board tonight. People were trading seats to accommodate a family. I think if you have good reasons for wanting to be seated in a specific configuration then you pre-book.

The cost of the flight for me was so cheap I paid the extra few £ to pre-book my seats each way and got priority boarding thrown in. Still cheap as chips, there's no way I could have done that journey by car or train for anything like as cheap & I was in the air an hour to go from London to Scotland.

It's basic, it's no frills and it's cheap. It's not hard (or expensive) to pre-book your seats if it's important.

What is the safety issue of being across the aisle? The outbound flight they cocked up but then sorted it onboard. The return flight I genuinely don't see the issue.

Nope ! do a bit of reading! do you live in a cave?
You're prompted when booking flights to PAY to ensure you all sit together.
If you chance it and don't pay to sit together than you're simply 'lucky' if you do all get seating next to each other.

I wouldn't dream of it ( subject my child) to potentially sit with a stranger for the duration of a flight, cause I 'hoped' I'd wing it.
PAY, like all the rest of us have to.
We couldn't bear the thought of our family being split up during a flight. Of course it's an annoyance, extra blummin money, but you simply have to pay if you want to ensure you're all together.
AND....there would be no way on earth, I'd move from my family, because another parent didn't bother to pay, but then caused holy hell and genuinely expects somebody else to move... RAGGGH !
Sorry OP you've got my goat !

Having just flown today and tried to wheel my regulation sized case down the aisle I can confirm that those aisles are bloody narrow!!

When travelling alone I just take the randomly allocated seat on check in with Ryanair. However, on my most recent flight with them they had randomly allocated the same seat to two of us - that was an interesting dilemma for the crew, I did wonder if we were going to be asked to do rock, paper, scissors for it at one point.

You do not need to pay to book seats if you are travelling with children on Easyjet. One if the services they offer is to seat parents and children together.

You also have to enter the ages of children into their system when you book do they have plenty of advance notice and know that you are travelling with young DC.

This is clearly easy jets fuck up.

I'm pretty sure children can't go through the biometric gates because of issues of people child smuggling or other criminal behaviour. A gate can check that a child is travelling with a parent or guardian for example.

It's been stated earlier that "together" is open to interpretation.

The problem lies in the fact that many planes have a 3+3 seat configuration , and that most people going to holiday destinations at popular times are not travelling alone
Unlike a cafe or whatever, seats can't be squeezed in / moved around to accomodate various groups
Lots of couples or other travelling pairs want to sit together and are happy to pay the fee
Quite a few groups of four prefer to sit as 2+2 rather than 1+3 for various reasons, and than there are larger groups of 5 etc
The outcome is that on a fully booked flight the majority of un- allocated seats are singles next to 2 people who have paid to be together.
So if an airline decided to follow PPs advice and commit to always seating under 16s ( or whatever age) next to each other, they would have to stop selling tickets when the plane was about 80% full (putting up prices for everyone by about25%)
Or sell single adult tickets only after that cutoff point
Families would not be any better off
The recent rule one airline has of one adult having to book a seat beside a child is a good one, and costs less that what most families do now of booking seats for the whole family, and also less than what would happen if the airlines were forced to seat children next to parents because of the mathematical issues above

You shouldn't have to book to seats to guarantee you sit next to your toddler, utter madness!!

Flying...the only time you have to pay twice to sit with your children.

Can you imagine a restaurant saying they can't seat you with your toddler unless you pay a booking fee for the table.

Or a cinema asking for a booking fee, as well as the usual seat fee, to sit with your toddler.

Or a bus?

But that's the point, Different
They can't move the chairs around like a cafe, or let you stand next to child's seat / put child on knee like a bus or train can
And if about 80% of the seats in a cinema have been sold for a new release (in a cinema that allocates all seats), then no you probably can't sit next to your child for that showing
It is not that it's not commonsense or reasonable for all children to be seated right next to a parent
it is just that it can be difficult or impossible to achieve in a full plane in school hols , in which most people want to sit with their travelling companions

We don't have the 'luxury' of cheap airlines here, so we pay a premium to fly, and seats are all assigned. No worries.

Except that the last time we flew home from Europe (reputable ME airline) on a long-haul (12 hour +) flight, the 4 of us (2 x adults, a 5YO and a 3YO) were assigned seats that were scattered throughout the cabin.

I can't imagine there's a single traveller who wants to sit next to a random 3/5YO and supervise them through meals and sleeps and loo stops.

We had to rely on the kindness of strangers to move, as the flight was full and there were no other options.

Really don't know what the airline was thinking.

YANBU.

YABVU OP. Why should someone who has paid to sit together, be forced to move, to accommodate you, who hasn't? This is so unfair.

And, as many posters have pointed out, you keep contradicting yourself. One minute you know this airline is good, because? Presumably you've flown before? The next, you are naieve and had no idea this was such a hot topic.
It can't be both. Which is it? You are grasping at straws here.

Dowager as a frequent business traveler I find that the best way to manage being seated next to the offspring of a person too tight/stupid to reserve seats is to wash down 2 Xanax with a glass of wine. If the parent or kid is particularly belligerent I might leave a violent film on and/or give them a load of Coca Cola 30 minutes before landing.

It's very interesting to see so many parents bleating about safety when on every flight I take back from the ME there are parents who flee to the business cabin after dumping their offspring on the poor crew in economy. No safety issues when the kids are in a different cabin then? Righto.

We've had situations where a substitute plane has meant that allocated seating had to be reassigned at gate/on board. There was a similar issue on a recent flight but the parent seemed more upset than their child and there were 2 parents with child plus friend and her dc not sat together. If you check in online you can see what seats have been allocated and change them if others are available. Across the aisle is not that far and good for toilet visits and space.

Excuse me? You so not get to dictate to posters like Tempus how they post or what language they use. It's completely fucking acceptable to swear and to point out cunty behaviour on MN, thank you very much!

And the fact that is the airline and CAA guidelines say that they will aim to, try to, hopefully seat you together. It doesn't say 'we guarantee two free adjacent seats for you and your special snowflake'. If seating you together is such a safety issue and an imperative, perhaps you should have had the gumption to thoroughly read the small print.YABU.

I wouldn't move for anyone, it doesn't make me mean or grumpy for fucks sake. It's because I bloody hate flying, I book and pay for seats where I'm most comfortable. If I can't chose seats at the time of booking then I don't book.

OP if you Google for "mumsnet airline seats aibu" and you'll find this thread comes up every six months.

It's a hot button issue because people who have paid to sit next to their children get angry at others not paying and expecting the same service. I see that's not what happened to you on the flight out although the flight back is arguable.

I think the budget airlines are ridiculous. You know they considered charging people to use the toilet? But they've got us trained to believe it's unreasonable not to pay.

Oh and it's also polarising because some parents are quite entitled about people not moving, such as the poster upthread who called people not wanting to move out of their paid for pre booked seats as grumpy.

Most people would be annoyed to have something they'd bought taken away and given to someone else with no refund.

Yes Rhi - amazingly I have never seen an OP offer to reimburse anyone who was made to move for them. Including this one.

I think that part of the problem is catching up with how things have changed. These airlines didn't used to have any allocated seating so those who boarded first got first pick meaning families with young children were usually first. Then came speedy boarding, being able to pay extra for extra legroom etc and then allocated seating. At first, there was a fuss about paying for seating & not many did it but, gradually, more & more did so the choice of unallocated seats even when check in opens is smaller and it will often be odd seats or scattered across the plain. If you wait until check in at the actual airport, there are very few seats left. This has also taken the control away from the airline as they have to work with what they are left with.
We have 2 DC and our preferred flight configured is one adult with both DC in one row and the other adult ideally somewhere close but we don't really care as that adult is getting some time off childcare. On a recent flight we were given two sets of two seats in different bits of the plane. As soon as online check in opened, we saw this, tried to get a row of three but there were none available. We very quickly realised what we had been allocated was by far the best of the available options so confirmed those seats before someone took them from us. There was only one other pair of seats available for selection on the whole plane, the rest of the not-paid-to select-seats-in-advance seats were all singles.

Everyone who thinks sitting a toddler across the aisle from a parent is unreasonable...... what on earth do you think happens when one parent flies with three children? One of them obviously has to sit across the aisle.

One of mine has sat across from the aisle from me every flight since she was 3. It really isn't a problem. They are a further distance from me when they are in the back of the car and I'm driving.

There's a great sense of entitlement from some parents that they are somehow special and should get for free what everyone else has had to pay for. And that if for some reason they don't get it for free, then someone else should give up what they have paid for.

Well bollocks to that. Parents aren't the only people who may have good reasons for wanting to sit next to someone specific. Yet there seems to be an assumption (among some parents) that any other person's reason isn't as valid as their own.

Even before having children I had a specific reason why it was important to for me to sit next to my travelling companion. I'm not going to elaborate on what that reason was, because the point is that it's nobody else's business. I paid for seats together for my own reasons and if somebody who hadn't paid for seats together rocked up and demanded I move because they had decided their reasons must be more important than mine I'd have cheerfully told them to fuck right off. That's their problem for them to sort. I had my own problem to sort - which I had done by paying for seats together.

Oh dear that was me with the grumpy comment. I've never thought if myself as entitled . Does it make it any better that I would have happily moved for someone in the same circumstances regardless of what I paid. Or for a nervous flier wanting to be next to a partner etc.
I just saw it as basic consideration/kindness. Sometimes people don't plan things perfectly.

I didn't think of them as grumpy just for not moving, but rather how they behaved about it. I was sick and had just spent hundreds I didn't have because I'd been too ill to fly the day before. I asked very very nicely. Someone I spoke to just stared ahead blanking me. I suppose people struggle to be assertive sometimes.

But very good point Lunar1 about nervous fliers or other reasons. I'm wrong to call people grumpy.