To not pay to choose seats but expect to sit together?

[Peachpicklepie]

I'll be flying with easyjet on a short flight (just over an hour) soon. It will be me, my toddler (2 years 4 months) and my baby (four months). Baby will be on my lap. According to the website they will sit children near an accompanying adult - surely in the case of a two year old this means next to?! I really don't want to spend another £20 on choosing seats if it's unnecessary.

The fee should be waived for those who need specific seats because of medical conditions or disability (as I think EasyJet does).

Well, flights aren't a human right either so the point is irrelevant. Writing it in in a staccato sentence doesn't change that.

The airline has made reasonable adjustments by seating small kids near their parents. That doesn't impinge human rights.

This. You either get the choice to pay or not or fares go up across all seats.

I prefer the choice

It's a package, you start with the basic then build on it according to your needs. I don't want my standard fare to include seat choices and meals.

Agreed. Easyjet paved the way for seat charging and others followed suit.

Easyjet is forecast to make £260 million profit this year.

Of course they need to make a profit but maybe this is a profit making add on too far (makes stewards lives a nightmare, upsets customers, delays take offs etc). I'm sure they'd think of other things to charge for anyway to boost their already significant profits.

They do spin us a line that they need to charge for this in order to keep ticket prices low but that doesn't mean it's true. They have indeed also put their base fares up as well. When there is a COL crisis and rising cost of fuel etc you can pretty much spin anything Eg. Being told by energy companies that the cost of fuel means they have to treble their charges and then 6 months later announcing profits beyond their wildest dreams.

In theory yes but that is why seats are cheap. We paid for seats last year but still didn’t sit together. Although if I was asked to move for a young family I always would. X

Not sure if anyone has already said this on the thread but - I used to work for an airline a couple years ago and we HAD to sit under 12s I think next to their parent whether they booked and paid extra for the seat or not. We would actually move adults if it meant a child couldn't sit next to their parents.

Not sure if this is the case now though!

I was going via Easyjet for a holiday with my sister, and didn't pay, so they split us up. Fine, I thought. And then the plane wasn't full, she clocked this and came to sit next to me anyway thus ruining my happy 3 hours with a book and a nap.

Can you pay to be split up? heh.

Easyjet is forecast to make £260 million profit this year.

I'm sure that looks massive as a headline figure until you consider that's about the equivalent of two or three top premiership footballers, that the airlines (all of them) have had a s* 3 years and are trying to rebuild the coffers, reequip etc before the next down turn because it is a horribly cyclical industry.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1007557/net-profit-easyjet-plc/

Did you read the article about Easyjet's soaring profits?

I know they're not charities. They will try anything they can to bleed customers dry. This is one of the reasons I don't fly for leisure. Now I have kids I would rather drive to somewhere like Spain or Italy (from France, where I live) than fly there.

But customers should have said, "fuck that shit" to this particular attempt to sting them, not just obediently going along with it.

Is there something showing the price of flights over time. Imo they are incredibly cheap now compared to a decade or so ago but I can’t find anything beyond sites selling flights

@MargotBamborough

Did you read the article about Easyjet's soaring profits...

And did you read and understand my reply?

Probably not but I can see you are utterly convinced this is all about big bad airlines simply ripping off poor customers at any opportunity.

You're wrong, there's a lot more involved here but I don't feel a further exchange of ideas is going to help.

I can only hope you at very least do appreciate that if the seat choice fee is dropped then everybody onboard will pay more.

Well then so be it. At least the advertised price would be the true price and planes will be able to take off with minimal fuss.

Planes could take off with minimal fuss if people simply accepted that if they want guaranteed seats beside each other, they paid for them.

I paid when DS was young and simply accepted it as one of the costs of traveling with a child, and only stopped paying as soon as it genuinely didn't matter. I'd rather keep flight prices low thank you very much, than have an inbuilt cost for something I now don't need.

I don't know why people are writing as if airlines are utility companies.

The Civil Aviation Authority is not going to force airlines to stop charging for seat allocation.

I always viewed it as flight prices have come down over time and budget airlines hook people in with cheap flight prices to, and then you add on what you need/want, so it's a cheaper if you don't care where you're sat.

When it was just DH and I we didn't mind being split up so we were able to have a cheap flight. Same if we were on a booking with friends. Being able to allocate passengers into the odd single seats allows for the plane to be running at capacity rather than hoping you get enough single traveller bookings to fill the rows.

Now we have DC, we want to be together so we pay for it, just like we would if we wanted to guarantee we sat next to each other or our friends in years gone by.

Right, but a significant number of people don't accept that and probably never will, so this policy is always going to cause problems.

Fully aware that no one is going to make airlines stop the charges. I was merely using utilities as another example of how readily the population accepts an explanation around extra costs etc.

Surely they're accepting it everytime they fly?

Maybe the airlines need to stop pandering to folk then and make it very clear at time of booking that they may be close but not beside a DC if they don't pay, and anyone who expects different seats will be deplaned, as will anyone else wanting to swap seats and kicking up a fuss.

Ryanair get a bad rep but they handle this well. If you're traveling within a DC under a certain age you're obliged to pay for seats together but it's something like < £10 for the adult and DC to sit together. Stops the arguments on the airplane.

I remember that Ryanair (and some other budget airlines) used to be a free-for-all, with nobody having pre-allocated seats. Boarding the plane was like getting on a bus or a train - you just found a seat and sat in it.
That's how the "priority boarding" charges came about - you paid more to be among the first on the plane, giving you a wider choice of seats.
I think they moved to pre-allocated seating on order to make boarding faster.

I think there's a difference between charging for particular seats (you want a row near the front so you can get off quickly (or at the back on some planes)) and charging for groups on one booking to sit together.

If I book with my family I expect allocated seats together. I might not like where they are, in which case I can pay to move, but I should have seats together. BA always did this anyway if you had kids under 12 so has never been an issue for me but I think it is stupid to deliberately allocate kids away from their parents as a money-making ploy.

And yes, I would happily pay an extra £10 for a flight if it meant this nonsense didn't go on.

Or they could just automatically stick an under 5 next to a paying adult if the airline 'requires' it.

When it was just DH and I we didn't mind being split up so we were able to have a cheap flight

A lot of flights aren't cheap and they still charge. If you want to choose your seat before 24 hours, you have to pay to select your seat in business class on many (though not all) routes with BA.