Aibu re booking sets on the plane

[Yeaididthat]

We (2 adults and 3 kids) are due to travel with jet2 for the first time for a family holiday in just over 3 weeks. When I tried to reserve seating this morning it appears as though all seat except exit seats are already booked, and these can only be booked by 14 years+. DC are 10, 8 and 3. As cheeky as it is, surely Jet2 aren't going to turn us away over this? I'm aware that this is expecting others to take seats they didn't chose and have paid for but it is the front row etc which is still available. Aibu? Do airlines provisionally allocate children seats and this doesn't appear?

I dont mind paying a nominal charge - £3 or so per seat to sit together and choose our own seats. What gets me is the £15+ charge some airlines dictate. Like you have a choice not to sit in a seat! Or a choice not to sit with young children.

I don't see how families keep the costs down for everyone else by paying school holiday prices.

Because Ilovesooty if school holiday prices didn't exist Jet2 and their friends would have to charge more outside the holidays or they would go bust. The school holidays are when they actually make money.

If I've paid £30+ to reserve a seat, and I've reserved a window seat ad I prefer it and can at times be a nervous flyer and the window helps, why should I lose that £30 and move to the middle seat you've been allocated?

Often the airline won't refund, or its hours and hours of phone calls to ( their sometimes premium rate) customer service lines.

So why should I lose the window seat, move to a cramped middle seat possibly be more nervous AND £30 down?

dont mind paying a nominal charge - £3 or so per seat to sit together and choose our own seats. What gets me is the £15+ charge some airlines dictate. Like you have a choice not to sit in a seat.

Thomas cook can be around £35 but then they do have really cheap transatlantic fayres.
I agree for short haul though.

I think Jet 2 only let a certain number of people pre-book seats then the rest get allocated at the airport. This happened to me and DS10 last summer. We would have been fine sitting separately anyway, but at airport check in we ended up together.

I don’t get the pregnant lady needing to be beside her husband.

We paid over £100 each for extra leg room seats at the front of the plane to Mexico because DH is 6'4 , a family with a toddler who'd paid nothing tried to get us moved as they had a child who would benefit from extra room to play!!! The crew actually asked us if we would and we said no, unless there was a free business class upgrade available. It is very uncomfortable for DH to fly so we accept paying extra to choose our seats, I don't see why having a child gives advice the right to sit where they want without bothering to book and pay in advance like everyone else.

But fash that is quite clearly CF territory. Space to play, nice try.

I wish more airlines just used common sense. My dh is very tall. One we travelled with used to look down the queue pick out the tallest ones and give them the extra legroom seats. Any that were left over were then just allocated on a first come first served basis. Seat booking came in and I remember booking us two extra legroom and two standard but on the same row. They gave him the extra legroom then left me with two kids under 5 six rows back.
We holidayed in UK after that. It cost a fortune as well!

Well your opinion is certainly in the minority Tea based on the previous thread. I don't think airlines should charge either and for what it's worth I don't pay either. I don't care where I sit. But I would never expe t someone who has pre paid and pre planned to move for me. If you need to be seated with people or in a specific place then you should pay. The airlines don't always refund you so how is it fair if you end up effectively paying for a stranger to have the seat you chose?

I have never once paid for seats in advance and every single time I've been sat with the people I am travelling with - children and adults.

I thought the argument was often that the airlines discount the quieter periods rather than inflate the prices for school holidays.

I'm another who doesn't see why the woman on the coach should have been expected to move. If she had a spare seat next to her she probably had a window seat and would have been expected to move to an aisle seat.

We flew with Jet2 at Easter and I never pay for the reserved seats. However, when you book it appears that they provisionally give you a block together if you're travelling with DC, because when I went to check in it automatically allocated us four seats together. Give them a call if you're worried, but we liked Jet2 and would use them again. I can't believe that any airline would make a 3-year-old sit away from his/her parents!

We flew BA long-haul a few years ago to visit family. DS1 was 3 years old and has complex special needs; DS2 was ten months old. We phoned BA months before our flight to explain our situation and they booked us 3 seats together at the front of the section where DS2 could have a little bassinet thingy directly in front of our seats/sit on our laps. All good - the flight was great. Same seats pre-booked for the flight home. At the airport on the way home we got our boarding cards and DH had been moved to about 7 rows further back, leaving me with 10 month old DS2 and 3 year old DS1 with complex special needs on my own. A random adult had been given DH's seat. It took a massive amount of arguing to get DH reinstated. We did manage to sort it, but it does show that pre-booking still doesn't guarantee your seats, whatever your circumstances.

Witch if you actually read my posts you will see that right at the start I stated that I am flying with Jet2 in 3 weeks and have paid for pre-booked seats. My issue is with the total con that families have NO CHOICE but to pay an additional £100 on top of over inflated school holiday prices. And that if needed I would move from my booked seats to accommodate someone else, assuming DH and I were still sat with the children. Nowhere have I said I expect anyone to move for me.

If I'm in the minority then that's fine by me. Minority isn't always wrong, particularly on mn.

DH has just read my post over my shoulder and said "you do know that the whole of MN will think I deliberately moved my seat for some well-deserved peace and quiet"!

We always prebook seats. On two occasions we have been asked to move and both times we said no. It wasn’t a problem, the airline staff just moved on and asked others.

I’m not moving from a prebooked seat because someone else hasn’t prebooked.

We usually fly with Virgin Atlantic and have never paid to book seats since they started charging in the last few years. When we flew with our two older teenagers last year we were seated two together, one row behind the other.

However, last month it was must my husband and myself flying and out to the US we were allocated seats together on check in but while away I read something that said that as a Virgin Flying Club member I could reserve my seat for free 72 hours before the flight so I went online and did that but it wouldn't allow me to reserve the adjacent seat for my husband as he's not a member, but the flights were both booked together by me. Anyway, from experience I assumed that he'd be allocated the seat next to me anyway. Being a night flight neither of us wanted to fall asleep on a stranger's shoulder.
When we checked in online, bang on 24 hours before the flight, he'd actually been allocated a seat 20 rows in front of me - and I had an empty seat next to me. We were able to quickly change his seat allocation before someone else nabbed the one next to me.

I used to work for a large airline and can confirm that the seat booking thing is a scam to get more money out of customers. The algorithms were changed when Ryanair et al invented this as a way to make more money out of people. The large non budget airlines were forced to follow even though they didn't want to as the system had been working fine as it was. i.e discretion of check in staff who would help out the very few people who actually needed specific seats ie very tall people, people on crutches, parents with children, visibly upset people scared of flying. Worked fine for 50 odd years.

Anyway, the algorithms only let a certain number pre book so all the people who want to pay for window/ailse get them and they then hold back enough so they can meet their obligations to seat children with parents and deal with anyone turning up on crutches etc. I woudnt bother paying unless you really, really want an aisle/window seat fo some reason. Thisis how it works with large trad airlines anyway, I wouldn't guarantee that Ryanair dont push the boundaries for every extra penny, but then I would never fly with them anyway unless I had to, and certainly not long haul.

I thought the argument was often that the airlines discount the quieter periods rather than inflate the prices for school holidays.

And the difference is? They need a certain amount of revenue for flight routes to be viable and either way more revenue comes from the school holidays.

I didn't see that Tea and it sounds like in a round about way we agree. I dislike the policy of making people pay. But it's the people who turn up and demand certain seats when others have paid for theirs and want those who have paid to move.

It's a bit like turning up at the supermarket when someone else has bought the last loaf of bread you like, and demanding to be given it because you think you need it more.

If you want to sit together on a flight then you pay for it or take the risk.

I’m a very nervous flyer and book all our seats together when booking the flight. I’m a bit nuts about this because any stress during the flight I just can’t cope.
Anyway on our last flight, we got on the plane and our seats had been allocated to other people. I had a crying baby and the air hostesses had to go around moving people for us, (even though we had paid to be sitting together) I was getting dagger eyes from everyone.
This might have been because of the crying baby, but I was burning up with embarrassment that everyone thought I was one of those people that don’t prebook seats and then expect others to move.
I wanted to cry out ‘ but you don’t understand, I paid for the seats, I am the VICTIM here’ but it was all sorted in about 3 minutes and I just sat down and hid my head for the rest of the flight.
I know you probably have this sorted now but ring the airline and pay for the seats together if you want to sit together. Best of luck.

I think you’ll find it can be worked out by being polite and gracious when you get on board. Have a word with the cabin crew and they will see if someone could swap. You’d definitely want to sit next to the three yr old (and no one is going to want to sit next to a lone three yr old are they!), maybe try and get the other two kids seated together and other parent sits near enough to them to help if needed.

I was on a flight with my then three yr old and we hadn’t been able to book seats as we’d been changed onto the flight due to a cancellation. I just asked the crew nicely and several people kindly offered up their seats to us.

I always book my seats at the time of booking to save the hassle though.

I think we do in some ways. But I don't agree that paying 12 quid for a seat so I could sit next to DC usurps someone who for a real reason of anxiety needs a window seat? It should be on need and tbh if it makes the flights for everyone slightly even more expensive then fine. To me it feels wrong to charge people who are anxious, have bowel problems, young children more than everyone else?