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.

They will allocate the child for free if you pay for the adult

Their policy is clear - this is on you

People would probably be a lot more inclined to move if the parent said “look I’m really sorry. I didn’t realise I had to book seats. Will you take the amount it cost you to book the seat in cash, and trade with me so I can sit with my child”

I know I would

yes, it’s ridiculous but those are the rules – if you don’t like them don’t fly with Ryanair. I don’t for this reason

It's in breach of the Civil Aviation Authorities guidelines:

Young children and infants who are accompanied by adults should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult. Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults. This is because the speed of an emergency evacuation may be affected by adults trying to reach their children.

While not binding, RyanAir should be compliant with this. If they aren't, it absolutely gives the OP grounds to complain.

I'm a nervous flier and therefore pay to sit next to DH so I can crush his hand on take off rather than some poor stranger's hand! I'm not giving up a seat that I have specifically chosen and paid for to make my flight easier because someone else hasn't bothered.

Did you miss I am talking about what I would have done, not what everybody should have done? There would definitely be people who chose and paid for a specific seat for a specific reason, there would have definitely been others who wouldn’t have been affected a jot by swapping, yet their arse was too heavy to lift for a good reason.

Actually they can, if they use the line that it's for safety reasons. This is written into the policy of most airlines.

A passenger who refuses an instruction to move from crew can find themselves disembarked.

Is this your first time using ryanair OP?

Did you not know that you have to pay for seats?

Yeah exactly this. This is what I would have done although I'm a serial seat booker so would actually not be in this situation.

It's ridiculous but their policy is actually that jt is mandatory for kids under 12 to sit with adults but customer must pay to reserve the seats. Parents of young children should sit with their child. I think they should offer free seat reservation of one parent with the kids during booking. Unfortunately making money comes before passenger safety so we always book seats together just to avoid the stress.

It says adult, not parent. Pretty shit for the adult left randomly sitting next to a four year old though (if indeed this happened).

You are prompted constantly when you go through the booking so there's really no excuse. All for the sake of saving about £20.

we don’t have to accept this – if we don’t like the policy we fly with another airline!

With ryanair you have to pay for everything.

So it's either pay for a cheap flight and pay for add on extras.

Or pay for a more expensive flight with another airline

Haven’t read all the thread but Ryanair do put kids beside parents…..you just have to pay for the adult seat and the kid’s seat is free. Just pay for your seat in future like all the other parents who want to have their child beside them.

Good luck to the poor person sat next to my 5 year old.

Ive always paid extra to be guaranteed a seat next to whoever I'm travelling with.
I really don't think it's reasonable of you to expect other families or groups to be split up, when they have likely paid extra to be together but you haven't.

But crew will most likely not confront paying custumers to serve non paying custumers. OP chose not to book and pay seats.

I wish the OP lots of luck complaining to the airline who makes a virtue of not giving a toss. If they complain to anyone, it should be to the CAA

exactly this!!! @LHGL why couldn't you have one adult sitting with the 4 year old and the other adult sitting with the 7 year old?

If you book for 4 people at a restaurant, would you pay 25% more so your 5 and 7 year old aren't sat on separate tables with a different family? Crazy 😆

I'd have paid double to sit them on somebody else's table and eat my dinner in peace.

That's fucked, anyone saying you should have paid extra to sit together: NO. Ryanair are a shitty airline who exploit the f out of their customers. File a chargeback with your bank for all your flights. CFs!

This will have been to do with weight distribution on take off, although a 3 year old wouldn’t make much of a difference.

😆take mine too!!!
New business venture!

😂

Good luck with that 🤣🤣