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.

You'd have to have a hard heart not to let a four year old sit next to their family, let's face it

Begs belief

You don't need to. Their policy states children will automatically be allocated a seat with an adult.

It's a safety issue if nothing else. In an emergency who would have looked after your kids. I'd have taken them off the flight before I'd be separated from them tbh.

I'm not sure why so many are berating the OP for not paying for seats. According to Ryanair's policy an adult travelling with kids HAS TO PAY for a seat anyway, which OP would have done. Up to four children for every paid adult ticket will then be seated with the adult. In this case Ryanair seems to have violated its own policy. Unless I'm missing something.

"For safety reasons, children under the age of 12 must sit beside an accompanying adult, and infants (aged 8 days to 23 months inclusive) must sit on an accompanying adult’s lap. It is mandatory for an adult travelling with children under 12 (excl. infants) to reserve a seat. A maximum of four children for every one adult on the same booking will receive a reserved seat free of charge. This ensures parents of young children sit together during the flight. This will also allow you to check-in for your flight 60 days before departure. It is not mandatory for any other adults or teenagers in the booking to reserve a seat, however they may choose to do so if they wish to seat with the rest of the family."

Poor parenting, don't blame the airline for your own shortcomings.

No-one can read on here. See latest post.

How long before did you checkin @LHGL ?

I presume you didn’t realise you had to pay to reserve a seat and that even if you did, Ryanair have a broad interpretation of sitting “together” and thus may have only meant adjacent row. A hard lesson learnt. Pay to reserve seats next time for all.

I'm confused re how this happened. As PPs have said, and it's been my experience too: if you book a child ticket on RyanAir's website you can't proceed to checkout without paying for at least one adult ticket and choosing a paid adult seat plus free seats for each child. If you accidentally select non-adjacent seats - for example 9F and 10F instead of 9E and 9F - there's a hard error. If seats together aren't available, you physically can't book that flight.

If something happens after the booking is complete so that your original seat assignments aren't good anymore (change of aircraft, or re-routed due to a delayed flight/missed connection) they are supposed to keep you in the gate area until they have assigned appropriate seats that meet the child seating policy. If that's not possible they book you on the next flight. Whether RyanAir's system had a flaw and accepted your initial booking in error or the system or a human changed something in error later or whoever booked the tickets somehow did something incorrect, the gate agents were in the wrong for telling you to board and saying they'd sort it out later (and then not doing so).

Can you check your original flight confirmation and see what it says in terms of ticket types (did it correctly record the three tickets as children?) and seat assignments (did the assigned seats somehow change, oir get wiped out and reassigned by default)? And/or make a formal complaint about what happened; let Ryanair tell you what caused the disconnect.

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Presumably because they have a policy that children under 12 need to be seated with an adult, so they didn't think they'd be separated anyway?

This is clearly a fault of Ryanair and not OP!

No, you made a 4 year old sit alone because you chose not to book seats.

This is why so many people avoid Ryanair like the plague. I decided after about age 30 i didn’t have it in me anymore to fly with them! Such a hassle every time and just really unpleasant. Is it the first time you’ve flown with them? They deliberately seat everyone apart so you have to pay to move your seats together in a group. You could try and complain but they’ll probably not do anything!

Hi. I'm a "mean girl" who has flown with two autistic kids many times when they were under 12. I paid for a seat to ensure they were with either me or DH. Every time. I would never, ever have expected anyone else to give up their own paid for pre booked seats to accommodate us. That's nobody else's responsibility. Not Ryanair's, not a random stranger, whose reason/need for pre booking a particular seat may not be visible or anyone's business to know.

I'm also autistic myself and hate beyond anything being in a middle seat with people either side of me, so I pay to book an aisle where I can, or if that is not available, a window or exit seat. It's not other people's responsibility to accommodate my sensory needs either.

I do sympathise of course when people have pre booked and then the system goes down or they change the plane and they reallocate at random. IMO they should refund anyone with a seat booking when that happens, it sucks when it happens on trains too.

Budget airlines are vile, but most people have little choice these days especially from smaller airports. You don't take chances with them, because they don't care about you or your kids. That's your job as a parent.

To call people "mean girls" for taking responsibility for our own families' needs and paying accordingly, and not giving that up because someone else didn't want to plan ahead or pay a few quid is just ridiculous - and very unfair. I would argue it's mean to use your young child to guilt trip and pressure strangers to accommodate your lack of planning and preparation, in fact.

But this is very weird though. Is reserving a seat an optional extra? If it is mandatory then it isn’t optional by definition. It should fall into the cost of the ticket.

i still can’t work out is it mandatory for a 4 year old to sit with a responsible adult or just any adult? If any adult, who is legally responsible for them in an emergency if the carer is not nearby? If they have to sit with a carer why on earth are the reservations not automatically made for you when you book? If you aren’t bothered about where you sit why do you need to be involved in the process? Why is the plane even taking off if the child is sitting either strangers?

the whole thing doesn’t make any sense.

OK, so now posters have clarified that Ryan Air does force parents travelling with young children to reserve a seat. Subject to availability, people can choose to sit in an area where the seats for children will be free. If these are all taken, the children's seats will need to be paid for. But the material point is that the booking cannot be completed without you first reserving and choosing seats.

If this is all the case, then how is it even possible that the OP chose a seat for her 4yo that wasn't near enough to either of the parents to meet the minimum requirements? People keep saying that she just assumed that the seats would be "allocated" next to her, but whenever I have reserved seats previously, this has involved choosing specific seats at the point of reservation. If there were no seats together available, then how was she allowed to even proceed with the booking in the first place? Surely she'd have just had to look for an emptier flight?

So does that mean that the whole thread is just a fabrication? Or is it just a massive exaggeration? Did she book seats that actually met the requirements eg seats across the aisle or behind/in front of each other rtc, and then have a tantrum because others wouldn't move to allow her to sit next to her dc? None of it makes any sense.

It's to do with body identification

You’re not missing anything - the OP has made this up!

That's why you pay extra to book seats next to each other. Yabu. Why should others move because you didn't buy seats and you don't know the reasons why people have bought the seats they have. We had similar on a easyJet plane with a 3 year old. Kind lady moved so the mum and 3 year old could sit together. The staff did tell the mum and dad (who sat on own elsewhere) next time to pay and book their seats if they want to be together.

Not sure why that gets offered up when we get similar threads to this because it's really not the reason for (perhaps) denying seat swops...

OTOH there can in absolute extremis on really rare occasions be a balance issue if you allow a swop, hence some companies having rules about no seat swopping at least until after takeoff.

Agreed!

Yeh, it was first time in a very long time that I've used a travel agent.
I thought it would be easier to manage since there were so many of.
There were many hiccups so I think you are right on the oversight!

Sad to read of your experiences but not surprised one bit. I would only ever fly with Ryanair to get to a funeral if I really could not find any other options, and thankfully that has never happened.

Don't blame the staff who are probably bullied by Ryanair management into the way they behave towards you and other people.

Well, the OP hasn't been back so this was just a bash-Ryanair-post. We like them -ideal times, cheap flights with no frills, read the instructions and follow their rules and what's not to like? So many SM complaints are actually the fault of the airport staff, the weather or ATC elsewhere. Perhaps we've just been lucky - must have taken 50+ flights with them and are content to keep using them. Oh, and no, I'd never swap a paid-for seat with someone who couldn't be arsed to do it.

Mean girls? Try being the solo traveller who books a preferred seat when they book a flight and but then often hassled by someone to move so they can sit with their partner/mate/family. Even if you decline to move, for whatever reason, are then often made to feel very uncomfortable for the rest of the flight.