Ryanair made 4yr old sit alone

[LHGL]

We had a really stressful experience recently and I don’t know if it’s just me who finds this completely unacceptable but I just feel the need to get this out there.
Family of 5; DH, myself, DD 4 and 9, DS 7. Both DD’s get very travel sick.
Just under 3 hour flight to Italy and we check in online in advance, and I notice nobody is sitting together. I mean nobody is even on the same row - 5C, 32F,19B etc. We click ‘change seats’ but there are no options. I read up on kids sitting alone and am relieved to hear that Ryanair policy is that anyone under 12 needs to sit next to an adult.
We get to the airport and tell the Ryanair woman at baggage, she’s says not to worry and they’ll make sure we’re sitting together at the gate. Get to the gate, same story but the cabin crew will sort us out.

we board the plane and the two flight attendants tell us the flight is busy and they can’t help. DH reminds them of the policy of kids and adults sitting together, and they shrug and tell us we’re blocking the aisle. After a little more polite protestation we’re told they’ll sort us out once seated.
They don’t. We tried to swap with people ourselves but only managed to get the two youngest together, people weren’t terribly helpful and luck was against us with language and some odd folk.
The long and short of it was that the flight was a very distressing experience for all, not least the kids, and I was really taken aback by how uncaring the Ryanair attendants were. They put more effort into trying to sell us scratch cards than attempting to stop my kids being terrified of ever getting on a plane again.

That’s pretty shit, I’d complain.

I can't stand Ryanair and refuse to fly with them. They have no respect for the people who pay them.
Either pay to book seats together in future or fly with another airline I guess

That’s bad. But couldn’t you have booked seats together when you booked the flight?

When you booked tickets were there no options to assign each member of the family a seat?

Could you pay for the seats to be together? I always do this when we fly as I don’t want to risk it.

Was there not an option to pay to prebook seats together?

Why did you not book seats ?

They should have seated the children near an adult (although if memory serves the legal definition of that is pretty broad and certainly isn't one I'd be happy with with my own similarly aged DC).

But honestly, flying Ryanair with young DC? You need to consider the seat reservation fee as part of the ticket price.

But as long as they were happy to sit each with one child they shouldn't have to pre book.

If an airline has a policy to seat under12s with an adult then why would anyone think they would ignore their own policy. 4 years old ffs

Why didn’t pay when you booked the flight to book the seats as well?

It's about a tenner per flight extra to choose your seats I think? Probably worth it for at least the youngest and one parent.

Next to can mean across the aisle, in front of or behind.

People did not want to swap with you because they had paid for their seats.

I do feel for you that you were in this situation but I'm also surprised that you were travelling with young children and you did not book seats. You should have read the paperwork.

What @BarbaraHoward said.

I've specifically flown with them before BECAUSE of that policy. I would complain and loudly on social media too. That's disgraceful. They know the ages of the children on board when allocating seats and specifically say you don't need to pay for a child to sit with an adult in your party. This is all on them.

You know you the answer is to pay for seat allocation when you book.

Pay for seats together.

Nobody on that plane is responsible for you sitting together apart from you.

last few times I booked with Ryanair, they gave us a free choose your seat booking for each child. Have they stoped this?

Ryanair will always split up people who book together if you don't pay for assigned seats. This is to make it as inconvenient as possible so you pay for seats. they now even offer you the option of paying an extra £3 for random allocation that won't be a middle seat.
Their whole business model is having a very cheap base price then adding extras to bump the price up.
If you want to sit together on Ryanair you pay for the privilege or you take your chances, but they will never put a whole party together for free.

I’d complain as a 4yr old should not be sitting alone. Why should another passenger have to assume responsibility for them in an emergency. I always paid to reserve a seat when mine were little, but you’d expect one parent should be sitting next to a child of that age.

I thought it was common knowledge that Ryanair deliberately split you up in order to ‘encourage’ you to pay the extra fee to book seats together.

But their policy says adults have to pay to reserve a seat if there are under 12s in the party, so curious why OP didn’t take advantage of booking the seats when she’d presumably paid.

https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-gb/articles/12892557860369-What-is-Ryanair-s-Family-Seat-Policy

Pay for reserved seats; don't expect other people to have to move for your convenience. Stop being so tight, and so selfish.

I am surprised that they seat such a young child alone, but Ryanair is Ryanair. I think they are great, but I know their rules which I am ok with in order to get cheap tickets.

Whilst I don't think YABU and I absolutely understand how stressful that must have been, I think it's a hard lesson learned that with young children you have to pay up for seat reservations at the time of booking. I always whine about it to DH when booking, but ultimately we don't want to take the risk, regardless of the so-called policy.

Pay to choose your seats like everyone else does. I wouldn’t have swopped with you either.