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.

I paid and still couldn't sit together with my husband who is unwell! Never again!

That is terrible @Pammy28 !

Why couldn't you sit together? You get allocated seats straight away if you pay I thought

Well you wouldn’t need to because as has been pointed out many times on this thread, it’s actually impossible to progress with a booking that includes a child under 12 without the adult selecting their seat. The website is set up to ensure this happens before proceeding. The adult is then offered a choice of seats where the child can also sit next to them - some of them are free too. The website also states that if there are no seats available then the adult cannot book onto the flight. Try doing a dummy booking and you’ll see for yourself.
The OP has completely fabricated events.

Nope there is no guarantee sitting together. I will never fly with Ryan Air again!

Me too, horrible rude staff in my experience, we always use jet 2 lovely staff.

I'm surprised this happened. I tried to book flights with Ryanair for my self, partner, 3 and 5 year old. It's not possible to complete the booking with children of those ages without booking seats so that children aren't seated alone. They will give you 1 free seat booking per child so you only pay for the adults which can be a little as £3. It depends how early you books as there might not be any any cheap seats left together - I ended up paying £30 each for front row seats as that was all that was left.

On one of the flights I wanted there weren't any seats left together (although plenty of single seats) so it wasn't possible to pay for the flight and had to book another flight

So how did you manage to book the flight without booking seats for the kids?

Also you could put the child on your lap.throughout the flight - they only have to be in their seat for take off and landing

Well obviously a parent with the 4 year old would leave the 5 year old completely alone, that's why. It's not as though the parents are sitting together elsewhere having a jolly time

They wouldn't as it's first come first served. You choose from the remaining available seats. The upgrade isn't to sit with specific people, it's to book specific seats that vary in price depending on whether they are front or back of plane and have extra leg room.

The only way to sit groups together is to not allow any choice of seat to anyone, then allocate all the seats when check in opens 3 hours before take off. That's what they used to do in olden times and it worked pretty well! Flight tickets were about 20x more expensive though.

What 5 year old? OP says Family of 5; DH, myself, DD 4 and 9, DS 7

@DinosaurMunch

The only way to sit groups together is to not allow any choice of seat to anyone, then allocate all the seats when check in opens 3 hours before take off. That's what they used to do in olden times and it worked pretty well! Flight tickets were about 20x more expensive though.

Yep, pretty much.

Many people like some of the results of debundling of fares/“menu pricing”, particularly the idea of lower base fares, but they are often not so keen on some of the consequences.