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’.

Because it’s all part of airline depackaging. If you don’t care who you sit with and where, if you only require the cheapest tier of luggage, if you don’t need food or drink on the flight, then you don’t have to pay and you can get a cheaper ticket. If you care about any or all of those things, then you can pay extra to buy what you need from it. As opposed to the previous model which charged everyone the same price and provided the same level of service whether they wanted it or not. As someone who doesn’t care where I am or who I’m with on a plane, and with no interest in drinks or snacks, I’m in favour of the new pricing structure. If this weren’t an option, ticket prices would be higher for everyone.

Anything which is desirable but not necessary can be a chargeable extra to keep the headline price down. And that includes choosing where to sit on the plane. All plane companies are capitalist endeavours to get as much money as possible from their customers - that’s how every company works. People value a low headline price over good customer service, and so that’s what the airline provide.

When I go to the theatre, they do not charge me extra to sit with my friends or family. They do suggest they will randomly allocate our seats on arrival, unless we pay more.

I am not wanting to book legroom seats, or seats at the front, or an exit row. I just want to be able to guarantee sitting with my two year old and their father without it costing me 66 euros.

I’ve already paid several hundred pounds for the flights.

Aer Lingus give 50% discount on the child’s seat and also on their luggage if an adult is also checking in a bag.

I always pay for seat selection because it’s important to me for medical reasons. The base price is to be somewhere on the plane. The seat selection fee allows me to sit where I want. I look before I book the flight and may choose a different flight based on available seats.

OK, you're right. You shouldn't put up with it. Don't go.

If there are 50 seats and the cost to fly you and make a profit is £50 per seat then they can advertise a low price of £30 (to attract people) for a limited number of seats, once those seats sell they up the next block released for £40 etc etc. They rely on people picking seats and taking cabin bags/equipment/hold luggage to subsidise those initial low prices that attracted people to the flight in the first place.
I fly to Dublin a lot I have paid as little as £12:99 and as high as £120 for the exact same flight depending on what I needed to take or how last minute the flight was. That's how budget airlines can afford to operate.
I prefer it to the old way where everything was included but flights were more expensive

Airlines are a notoriously high volume low profit margin business, particularly at the economy end of the scale. They offer some discounts for people who want an absolute bare bones experience, but the pricing model works on the assumption that enough people care about the other things (like seat preference) to be prepared to pay for them.

There is no world in which the airline would just offer the bare bones cost to everyone, as that would be completely uneconomical.

If you want everyone to pay the same cost they would need to re-price it at a middle ground, meaning some people would pay less but others would pay more. I’m not sure why that result is any better than the current pricing model?

But theatre tickets come in long rows which can accommodate different groups sizes, not groups of three. Its not the same.

Chances are, you or your DH will be sat very close to your toddler. But if the only seats left are across an aisle... thats what you get.

But it’s not the theatre.

And also it’s often cheaper to go to the theatre if you don’t care where you sit. Or if you don’t mind being seated apart.

You booked the airline, if that’s their policy by booking the flights you agreed with it. If you don’t like the policy you didn’t need to book it.

Your theatre analogy doesnt work because all seats arent the same price. You pay more for better seats and a premium experience.

The theatre doesn't have as many optional extras as an airline. It's not a fully comparable service.

Your ticket with reserved seats is closer to the actual price of the flight. You're not really paying extra, as such. People who are happy to sit wherever they're told to get a discount.

And if you're already paying hundreds, does an extra 60 odd quid for the ideal service rather than a reduced one matter?

But this is why I'm not convinced it's a great system from a sales psychology perspective. If these tickets all had those extra few euros on them and you essentially had to choose your seat for it, OP wouldn't care at all about the slightly higher cost. You also probably wouldn't get people causing drama by not paying and trying to swap with people who have.

Because then at least one parent and toddler are next to each other, the other parent can sit 10 rows away if necessary and save the cost of one booked seat. swap half way through if you don't want to be with toddler both ways.

On longhaul fights you get seated next to each other by default if you travel with children, they just don’t let you pick your seats. Often this means parents get put by default into the middle row. For Easyjet / Ryanair the policy is that one parent will be seated ‘near’ children under 5 - in my experience either next to them or behind them.

Next time you fly alone or in a situation where you don’t mind who you sit next to, then you can benefit from not paying the reservation fee.

It’s perfectly fair that those who want to choose specific seats pay more than those who don’t. It’s nice to have the choice.

I was doing the online check-in for two adults and a child. The system asked if I wanted to pay extra to choose my seat. I declined. Then the next adult, same question, same answer. The second adult was allocated some rows away. This was clearly designed to encourage me to pay the extra to choose the child's seat. Since DD was about 10 and would cope if not sat with us, I decided to call their bluff, and she was allocated next to one of us. When we got on the plane, most families had been split up like this, and lots swapped seats.

The issue with seat selection is a lot more emotive when it comes to children, however people taking issue with paying to select seats fundamentally misunderstand budget airlines, similarly to those who complain about baggage costs.

Generally speaking the airline advertises the fare. This fare covers getting you from A to B, in a seat. Some people don't want to take a bag, don't want to eat or drink, don't want to use wifi, and don't care who they sit by. They pay nothing extra. Quite a lot of people want some, or all of those things, so they pay for them. The model is therefore that they pay for the facilities and services that they want. That means that those who don't eat or drink aren't cross subsidizing those who want 7 G&Ts. It keeps the cost down and allows people to choose services that they require cafeteria style.

I'm sorry OP, you want one of those services that aren't including in the cost. Cough up!

An airline isn’t a theatre. With an airline, headline price is everything. They are in fierce and direct competition from every other airline flying from the same place to the same place and the key differentiator for most consumers is price. They go to Skyscanner and book the most cost effective headline price.

Theatres aren’t competing in that space. When I saw Come From Away a few weeks ago I wasn’t on Theatrescanner comparing the headline price points of Come From Away shows because that’s not how theatre works. There’s usually only one place a show is on, so if you want to see the show, you have to see it there. Theatres are seen as social, and a plane trip is seen as functional. They’re totally different and so their pricing structures are different. It just wouldn’t be advantageous for a theatre to price itself that way (and as with airlines, they’re businesses and if it increased their revenue to do so, they would).

Look at it the same way people should look at holidays outside of the school holidays: the advertised price is the discount price from the top price, it is cheapest price.

The theatre analogy was in response to another poster who compared them.

I far prefer knowing the headline cost upfront vs constant add-ons. It makes comparing flight costs difficult - price comparison sites are almost unusable now as a result.

I will pay it because the risk is too great otherwise - but I think it’s a bad policy, and bad customer experience to leave the ‘threat’ of being split up hanging over you.

What are you talking about? All theatres charge a premium for bookings. Buying tickets on the day if you don’t mind where you sit can often save you £££. Eg I went to a play with a Bridgerton actor that was ‘fully booked’ on paper a few years ago for £3 because nobody wanted a specific seat.

Bottom line, is if airlines were forced to drop this policy, the cost of all seats would increase, to roughly that you pay with the seat reservation. They take the risk that few people will take the basic option, or the flights wouldn't be viable.

Surely when you check in (24 hours before?) you get a chance to choose your seats for free?

I like the system. Single people rarely get discounts or offers compared to families so I’m in favour of it.

This is absolutely terrible customer experience IMO.

It shouldn’t be a game of bluff, particularly given most of the time you will have still spent a lot of money on booking the flights!

I often see threads complaining about people asking to move seats, and I get it that is annoying and you shouldn’t feel pressured to, but that is precisely why it happens.

If only those who care where they sit have to pay, then it keeps costs down for those who don’t care

When we flew BA last year, I double checked their policy and found that they will always seat a child with at least one adult from a group.