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.

Once upon a time you just got on the plane and found a seat. It seemed to work fine.

It did....but in order to maintain a low the base price/lower the base price that all changed.

It's still all about what's sometimes known as "menu pricing" and given profit made per average passenger these days if you somehow ban seat choice fees the airlines will have to claw revenue back from another item on that menu (e.g. raise the base price).

No such assumption here. You're right. But the ones who haven't paid and got lucky sitting next to their girlfriend/BF/grandad/in the aisle/next to the window/the right number of rows from the toilet are already settled and don't want to swap either. So just pay. My point still stands, you just expanded my argument.

That's all great but you were explaining the costs of allocating seats and if people just get on and sit down there isn't a cost.

If allocating seats costs money then not allocating could make prices overall lower not higher.

I wasn't referring to anyone who just got lucky, I was specifically commenting on the number of people who seem to think everyone has paid for a specific seat except the family who want to sit together.

Fair enough if you want to say people don't want to move but that is a different thing.

OK, fair comment, but do you take on board that in the current climate with current pricing structures if the seat choice fee goes (for whatever reason) the airlines will have claw back the revenue from elsewhere?

I know some see airline profit figures up in the hundred millions and think the airlines could just give this stuff away but look further and examine the typical profit per passenger over the year and you can there's not much if anything to give away...

Actually, i've just did a "chat to us" specifically on easyjet and the response was "we will make sure that a child is sitting with an adult from the same booking" (see below)

I never pay. My kids are older than yours and in experience there are always enough unbooked travellers they simply allocate families with children first from the remaining unbooked seats. Ive never yet even been across aisle from either child.

Separating a two year old from their parent gives them more trouble than its worth on many, many levels. They will do pretty much anything to avoid it.

You're right. But the ones who haven't paid and got lucky sitting next to their girlfriend/BF/grandad/in the aisle/next to the window/the right number of rows from the toilet are already settled and don't want to swap either.

They do it much earlier when checking in. They've probably allocated seats provisionally to families before you even arrive at the airport.

I’m a single mum and when I travelled with my son when he was little I always paid for seats. I would never have risked it (my anxiety is super-high) nor expected others to shift around for me. As a result there were never any problems However, on the two precious child-free weeks I had each year and travelled on my own, I specifically remember two occasions when I booked a seat on a flight to minimise my anxiety but was pressurised into moving. It was right before take-off and people tutted and gave me cut-eye as I tried to challenge it, like I was the one delaying things and was being unreasonable.

On one occasion the child in question was about 10 and she was in floods of tears so of course i HAD to move. Shame on that mum who was prepared to play fast and loose with her daughter’s anxiety levels by getting on a plane late with no seat reservations and making it everyone else’s problem. I ended up with a seat near the loos, which was why I paid for a seat in the first place: so I wouldn’t have to sit in the sh*tty seat that clearly everyone else was avoiding. I asked the staff if I could at have a free coffee/newspaper/chocolate for the inconvenience but they said no because it came out of a different budget.

If you can afford to go on holiday abroad, you need to factor seat reservations into your budget, like travel insurance (I bet they didn’t have that either). As it goes I effectively ended up paying for these entitled, penny-pinching idiots to get the seats they wanted.

If anyone ever asks me to swap again, i’ll have my headphones on, my eyes shut and I won’t be budging. If you choose not to pay to reserve seats where it’s possible to do so, you don’t get to dictate terms. And I already feel vindicated for my future actions because I never, ever foisted this type of situation on anyone else when my son was younger. Oh and because I’ve already reached my full quota of swapping.

I had a seat swap thing just the other week. Six of us travelling, four adults and two children. We'd paid to pick our seats and we were spread across the entire row - Adult, child, adult one side and the same on the other. We were asked to split up as the children wouldn't be sitting on their own anyway. I didn't want to but said I would if they paid for the seat reservations we were losing (there's never a refund, in my experience). Their answer was no so our answer was no.

We'd spent £200ish reserving seats both ways and I'm not sure why someone would think I'd be paying for their seat reservation.

I have heard about this but never seen this happen on a flight. How do they choose who to ask to move? And why isn't it others who didn't pay?

That's totally reasonable. If they were that keen to swap they should've covered your costs at least.

To update everyone else - I've now flown without paying for seats and just checking in when check in opens eight times and have always been allocated two seats together in rows 18-20.