Paying for seat reservations on flights

[MidnightPatrol]

I have just booked a flight and as increasingly seems to be the case, they want me to pay to reserve a seat.

I have a young child so I can’t ’risk it’ on the day, and the trip will be more enjoyable (by which I mean less of a nightmare) if we are seated together in one row (me, DH, DC).

The cost of this? 66 euros.

I just want to ensure I am seated with the other passengers in my booking, specifically my toddler. Feels grating to incur an additional expense for this ‘privilege’.

Yes they were having to take card payments which is why it took so bloody long and they were mostly all young and shocked it was going to cost them money 😂

Don't understand that - they wouldn't have been able to get through Security without having first checked in and been allocated a seat. Are you sure it wasn't them just being charged for trying to bring on a bag larger than a laptop bag?

If you buy through an agent, like trailfinders because you are doing a multi hotel/region/airport holiday, very often you have to check in at the airport. But you can phone the individual airlines and book your seats.

The reason why people survive in accidents, like the plane going on fire at the airport, in places like Japan is because it's standard to sit families together. You can imagine the chaos of parents etc trying to get to their children, even in just bad turbulence.

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle it was a German airport. I really don’t know the ins and outs we all ended up sitting on the floor at the gate while the ground crew allocated them all seats. Some of them had to pay at the gate with a card machine. I can’t remember if I had to scan in my ticket at security - I do in the U.K. but can’t remember. I looked up Ryanair just now and it says they will charge you at the gate if you don’t check in. No they didn’t all have extra bags nothing was being checked in like that. One lady had a huge rucksack she tried to pass off as an underseat bag and she got charged at the gate.

Agree that it’s odd.

From a load/balance POV many airlines close flights at something like 45 min prior to STD…if you haven’t checked in by that point you simply can’t do so and therefore won’t be allowed travel.

As as aside on the 100ml rule - it was introduced with a lot of thought by people who have a lot more expertise on the subject and credible scenarios than anyone here is likely to own up to..

I’ll pay to select seats long haul but not short haul.

We flew back from Newark NJ in 2008 with an US airline, at the time there was no additional charge to book seats, and the travel agent had selected some for us and our two teenagers together.

When we got to the airport to check in we were allocated different seats all separated. The check in agent took no notice of the piece of paper with our original reservations on it so we just accepted it.

DD had an interesting conversation with the American man sat next to her who told her if Obama got elected he wouldn’t last a year before her was assassinated.

You cannot pass through Security without having first checked in and with a boarding pass.

Exemptions exist if you have a gate pass but otherwise no, you cannot pass through Security unless you've checked in.

Those guys will have checked in and, as with RyanAir, will have been autoallocated seats.

i would lay money that their hand luggage will have exceeded 40cm in length - ie just a bit longer than a ruler! RyanAir free luggage dimensions are so tight that a regular small packpack will not be eligible to be taken on board for free and so each person with one will have to have had the bag checked into the hold st the gate and pay €60 (or thereabouts) for the privilege.

This can cause delays at the gate and flights may lose their slot accordingly

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle a lot of them had paper print outs. I don’t know why I would spend any time inventing this 😂

Most of us had our seats and tickets on their phones and they scanned them and we passed through. Priority went first then the rest of us as standard.

some people were being charged money but they did not have big bags I was right next to the desk there was no where else to go. Only giant rucksack lady got charged for a bag. They just had normal carry on luggage. I was the other side of the check in gate so could see them allocating seats on the flight deck software thing. The most angry ground crew woman didn’t have the payment thing on her side so they got sent to the other side where a guy was processing them all. Every time they tried to bleep their ticket on the scanners it came up red and made a noise. Perhaps there was a glitch but the rest of us got through fine, there was just an influx of younger people who came right as the gate was closing and then it took ages to sort them all out. I didn’t ask why at the time.

Cost of entire flight including profit = X
Number of passengers on flight = Y

You seem to be suggesting that it should be X/Y = price per ticket.

In reality its more like X/Y = Z

Z + 75% = 1st class tickets (Allocated seat)
Z+ 50% = Business class tickets (Allocated Seat)
Z = Standard Tickets (Allocated Seat)
Z - 30% = Budget Tickets (No Seat Allocation)

This allows them to offer headline ticket prices for the budget seats. It allows people choice to pay more for better seats/service. It allows the airline to make more profit.

N.b The examples of percentages are just pie in the sky figures to demonstrate how someone paying a lot more for a better seat/ticket is subsidising those who just want the cheapest price

It's a bit like companies who offer student discounts.

They don't do it to be nice to people with less money. They do it so that more of those people will still buy their product while they can still charge the higher price to people who can afford it.

So far this year me (single mum) and my son (now aged 12) have been on 4 flights. Our first trip, mostly through panic of not knowing how he’d respond, I paid to book the seats when we checked in.

The second, I also paid because in actual fact it was cheap enough to do so as I had chosen unfriendly flight times anyway.

we are going away again August. It has been booked with Tui but the flights are two different airlines I think. I will not be paying for those. He can suck it up and sit somewhere else 🤣. We’ve flown enough this year for him to know the routine and understand what to do and what not to do. The only issue might be if buying in flight food/drinks (although he does have a GoHenry card so technically buy his own).

im not trying to be mean, and I would pay (if a reasonable price) but at 13 (he will be when we go) and experienced in flying, he should be able to be independent.

with a toddler though…. I took my son away first when he was 7 and I didn’t pay and we were sat together. But now, I’m not sure I would take the risk..

Hope you have a good trip regardless of travel arrangements!

You also pay extra for luggage

it is what it is. Factor this in to the overall budget

You’re not paying extra to reserve seats. Airlines have broken down costs so that customers have the flexibility to choose the elements that they want rather than being forced to pay for extras they may not need. You pay for a basic unreserved seat on the plane as a starting point and then add on your extras - reserved seats, luggage, meal etc. Alternatively they could bump up the seat prices and provide everyone with an all inclusive cost even if you don’t want/need these extras. They are trying to give customers choices and flexibility - so many people view this in a negative way

Do you honestly think it costs £19 to fuel and get a huge aircraft off the ground from one country to another?

Of course it doesn't.

You're all competing for the "fill the seat" cheap seat - It's better to get the extra £19 than fly with an empty seat.

You fell at one of the many hurdles - all designed to make you pay more (because it actually costs more than £19 to fly you from country A to B)

It may be your luggage, where you want to sit on an aircraft, who you want to sit with .... but unless you're flying solo, someone is paying to fuel that aircraft ... and it's usually you.

Do you honestly think it costs £19 to fuel and get a huge aircraft off the ground from one country to another?

...and the fuel cost is almost trivial compared with a lot of the other charges involved in operating an airliner...

£19 doesn't even cover the UK APD plus the airport handling charge per pax ex somewhere like Stansted (their standard charge was over £15 per pax last time I looked).

Chuck in leasing, "parking", take-off/en-route/landing charges and running an airliner gets very very expensive very quickly.

I haven't flown in recent years. However, I found that becoming a member of the airline's Loyalty Programme used to give you priority online check-in so you could check-in 24 or even 48 hours before your flight then just check in luggage if you have any when you get there. This meant you could choose your seats 24 hours ahead of regular passengers who got them allocated on the day. I only ever had one flight where my DH was across the aisle. All the others we got seats together. Further back, we even got the extra legroom ones without extra charge! I don't know if they still allow this but it definitely saved me a fortune in having to pay for specific seats in advance.

I believe they have to sit you with your children if they are under a certain age so your toddlers should be seated with you regardless I think

You might want to check terms and conditions because most airlines have to sit young children with atleast 1 parent

Ever since we were split I pay I just include it in the cost of the holiday.

My mom had an accident abroad and I had to fly out, I had to pay to pre book my seat on the plane yet I was booking the last seat left that hadn’t got extra leg room. I paid it because I hadn’t got time to mess around. I had every intention of complaining but unfortunately it wasn’t my priority at the time so I never got round to it however I had a family with a young child next to me so offered to be moved to the extra legroom seat to give them more space as I knew it was there

Flights have gone up so much, and they do this by adding on stuff that’s actually essential.

look at Ryanair, when you book priority you get a bag and you get on the plane first. The reality is, you are just paying for a bag - not priority because they need to get the people on the plane first so they can put their bags away rather than blocking the entry way. Often >50% of the plane is priority!

Everything is going up, this is just another way to absorb the cost while appearing still competitive to draw you in.

Quite often the cost of actually fuelling, flying and staffing a plane is covered by whatever business has paid to export commercial cargo. The actual passenger spend just boosts the profit margin.

Remember when flight MH370 vanished? That thing was full of food, batteries, technology and other goods getting sent between counties. Pretty standard with the big airlines.

@MoonKiss

Umm…..that’s a bit of an it depends, very much, on the pax plus bags vs. cargo split TBH, and then of course the value of the cargo.

On something like a 777-300 you might on a good day, the right airport, lift perhaps close to 50 tonnes of payload. If you are carrying 300 plus pax with bags that’s typically 30 tonnes of your payload accounted for straight away leaving 20 tonnes for the cargo…and the 777 is one of the better aircraft when it comes to lifting pax plus lots of freight as well, a lot of aircraft don’t have that much excess in hand once a full load of pax plus bags are on.

How much money you make out of the freight you do load of course very much varies, the companies can charge a decent wack for stuff that needs moving in a controlled environment and moving fast (e.g. some pharmaceuticals/drugs, flowers, some food)…if your shifting stuff that’s more routine (e.g. small car components - air bag modules was one of our favourites ) it’s less lucrative..

I’d agree it’s all a welcome add on to what the passengers pay but I’m not sure how often the cargo would fully fund the costs, leaving the passenger fares as pure profit for the airline.

It’s obviously a different story if you offload passengers and their bags in favour of freight (😱) or with the specialist freighters who have more latitude to carry more stuff like batteries/tech and other items in amounts that aren’t allowed in passenger aircraft for safety reasons.

I just went away in May half term. The flight was fully booked. Both leaving and returning our flights were delayed because nobody volunteered to give up the flight seats they paid for!

The cabin crew tried their best but it was really hard because everybody who hooked were families wanting to sit together.

I know it's expensive bit just treat it as part of the holiday budget.

Missed my connecting trains and had to cancel and incur more charges for different trains because of this! Not fair.

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