To be annoyed about Easyjet seating?

[OhJoyOhJoy]

Took a flight last week with DC, who are 4 and 7. Chose not to pay extra to select seats, but checked in early enough to ensure there would be quite a lot of unallocated seats and I could go back and pay the extra to change if necessary. Got given two seats together (window and middle) plus the window seat in the row behind and decided that was good enough.

But when we got on the plane, the flight wasn't full and the seat next to my kids was empty, along with several other entire rows.

Same thing happened on the way back, except that this time the flight was pretty full. But the guy who had the seat next to our two was delighted to swap, as it meant he could be next to his girlfriend in the row behind.

Now I realise that if I wanted to be sure we would be together, I needed to pay, but it feels as if Easyjet we're just deliberately making everyone's life difficult, presumably in the hope that we would pay the extra the next time. AIBU to be annoyed by this?

I've known this to happen, I don't think it should when it involves young children not being seated with a patent though.

I thought under 12s had to be seated with a parent. I'm really surprised by this.

They do.

But "with" doesn't mean "next to". It can mean diagonally, or across the aisle, one row in front or behind.

I've just booked Easyjet and you could select standard seats free of charge. You only paid for extra legroom or the front section. So either they have different policies on different flights, or you skipped over the seat selection part?

I don't know. We just travelled with Easyjet and the four of us were sat together in a row. We have sometimes been split up, but not all that often.

And I've never paid extra to choose seats.

How can that possibly be true? They’d have to know what every passenger weighed. And they wouldn’t allow people to pay to choose seats.

@Blossomtoes Airlines use average weights for a male / female / teen / child to work out the approximate weight of the aircraft overall.

Weight balance is definitely a thing, I have spent hours manually allocating charter flights in my professional life, and I've been on small flights when they've needed to move people from front to back or left to right to correct balance. On a bigger flight it's less precise but for example I couldn't just allocate a 180 seat flight with 140 passengers from the front row backwards, the split has to be about even between the back and front.

Where flights are full (the ideal) then obviously it's not an issue.

Airlines will know approximately what % of seats they can expect people to pay to pre-allocate, and how far in advance, and the seating algorithm will allocate others based on what's left and where.

I've just checked the website and this is only if you have an Easyjet card or a flexible fare.

No, I don't have an Easyjet card and definitely only standard fare, not flexi fare, but did add a hold bag so maybe that's why I could choose a seat free of charge?

we flew to greece with easy jet last week. 5 of us. both on the way there and back we were all in a row next to each other - 3 on 1 side and 2 across the aisle.

I thought Easy put people together where they could, where as Ryanair purposefully split people up if they don't pay for seats.

I read that on a longhaul flight the airline makes something like £4 a person profit - which isn't a huge margin really, increasingly additional spends, like paying for seats or luggage or drinks or whatever make up a really important part of the airline revenue. We might not like it, but it's the business model that works.

As @ImInStealthMode says it can be true and is usually done using assumed weights and using those figures to come up with an assumed weight per seat row (left/right trim is not that important) which gets fed into the loading calculations.

Biggest problem can be in fairly empty flights where there could be some quite interesting consequences on take off if the trim (balance) has been calculated on (say) everybody sitting scattered around the cabin but on boarding everybody has migrated up front or down the back, resulting in big blocks of rows of either empty or full seats that the calculations don't reflect.

Not so much of a problem if the flight is full and people are simply swopping.

You’re entitled to be annoyed but like all of us you have two choices.

@wonderstuff Not sure about the big players but easyJet and Ryanair (at least pre-pandemic) operated on an overall profit of about £4-£5 per passenger INCLUDING all the add-ons.

Brilliant profit at upwards of 51 million passengers a year as easyJet was carrying in 2019, but creates a problem for smaller airlines who charge what it actually costs to get a plane in the air plus turn a profit. Our local Channel Islands airline gets slated all the time for 'ripping people off' by people who have no concept of the actual cost of getting tons of metal into the air with highly qualified pilots at the helm.

With Ryanair they made me select seats to sit with my 2 kids for free which I really appreciated. I mean I can't have a 2yr old and 5yr old sitting by themselves so maybe they've started doing this too to avoid hassle on the plane.

I mean yes it's probably deliberate and that makes it annoying, but :

• If the plane is half empty you can just move and sit together for free


• If the plane IS full then that's just luck of the draw, it's the risk you're taking. Maybe your neighbour would be willing to change.


• If your kids are under 12 they have to be seated with you anyway and if they're older than 12 I'd just enjoy a more relaxing flight !

I would love to know how you selected the seats for free . Was it after you checked in ? I have a hold bag also but no option to select seats without a charge . The cheapest is 5.99.

You know you could just sit together in the empty seats anyway?

I often travel alone on EasyJet, never pay to reserve seating, board right at the end and sit in whichever empty seat I fancy (usually emergency exit with more legroom). No one has ever told me off. As far as I'm aware the cabin crew have no plan of where you should be sitting, or at least don't check it and really don't care.

i just pay for my seat i know i could take te risk but dont want to-up to you really

ive never been able to pick and reserve a seat for free though on easyjet

It's quite a freaky experience, isn't it?

I flew back from the US during Gulf 1, when a lot of people weren't flying, and there were five passengers on a Boeing 747. We each had our own flight attendant and row of seats! I think I ate four meals in five hours.

Just coming back as I've been reminded of this thread; just checked DP and I in for domestic flights in a months time that due to various reasons were on 2 completely separate booking references, booked at different times, both on my easyJet account.

We've been automatically allocated seats right next to each other

Meh you chose not to pay and had one of your children possibly sitting with strangers. Great parenting!