To believe that ‘next to you’ means next to me and not behind or in front of me?

[AreYouAGod]

Booked first holiday abroad in years. TUI in their ‘upgrades’ emails told me to pre book seats. £30 per person to do this each way. So £240 to pick seats which is just mind blowing.

Spoke to an advisor and they said that I only needed to pre book the seats for me and my husband as the kids were young, so would automatically be ‘sat next to us’. I queried this multiple times.

Two weeks out from departure and I check and, predictably, we are not seated together.

Call TUI this morning and the advisor says ‘next to you’ can mean behind, in front or across the aisle.

This cannot be true. So I query the sense in this and she cuts me off.

Call back again. (This is an hour of my life on hold, going through security, talking to a robot about my ‘problem’, all with a rising sense of dread that I’m going to be in a viral TikTok or complained about in an AIBU thread for begging other passengers to move seats.)

Get through again to be told the kids could and probably would be seated anywhere. And if I don’t pay up it’s unlikely we will be put together.

So I just had to fork out £80 to change the seats and pre book the kids seats.

AIBU to think that ‘next to us’ means the seat next to me?

Surely seating 7 and 8 year old children from their family is a safety risk on a flight? Not to mention really annoying for other passengers?

Feel free to tell me I’m just being tight but I can’t understand why I’m paying for seat allocation on top of the flight costs. Plus, I have been told three different things by three different TUI advisors.

No wonder there are so many seat flight dramas - no one knows what’s going on!

@WondererWanderer
What are you doing on mumsnet as a single man?
Do you always make assumptions?

I agree with that poster, who has every right to be here and post. The airlines have decided that low baseline fares and paying for add ons are the way to go. If you want to ensure your children are in the seat beside you rather than in front or behind you have to pay.

If it's built into the price of the tickets solo travellers pay more. I don't see why they should.

Ignore her, there is a portion of people here who think they can click onto a website and dictate who else can use it. It's baffling to any logical, reasonable people but unfortunately they are out there and ready to start an argument at any moment...about anything.
How dare a man be on a forum about parenting, the shock and horror.

It pisses me off because it basically means that you have to pay a lot more for a flight if you are a parent and child. It also means you can’t compare flight price properly.

I think the person you spoke to first should have clarified the policy when you queried it, because to any normal person, sitting “next to” someone does not mean the seat in front.

Do you have no imagination?

@CoralOP**
Yeah, I was going to respond as every sentence in that post is untrue!

My original comment was to a poster saying a budget airline isn't really a budget airline.
My point is you can, with the right circumstances make it work and get cheap flights without add ons.

When I went to Morocco on a hen party about a month ago most of us paid around £40 return. Some paid a bit more because they wanted to take luggage but it was still good value.

Those with kids that you need to sit near, hang on in there! In a few years time, when they are a bit older, you can take advantage of them sitting anywhere and have cheaper airfares!

YANBU, words have meaning although I do think isle seats would be reasonable.

But planes are ridiculous, I think the price of a family with children should include pre booked seats, it's a huge safeguarding issue.

Or you can just do what everyone else does and create a fuss once on board until someone moves to accommodate you. My sister does this on every single flight.

Yabu.

Doing a tetris jigsaw puzzle to give everyone the seat choices they want would obviously have a cost to the airline.

It used to be that this cost was pooled and everyone paid a contribution to that cost.

Airlines decided this is unfair on the people who don't care where they sit or who they sit with, who were effectively subsidising everyone else.

Now, instead, the people who have low needs and are cheap and easy to serve get to benefit from a low ticket price, and anyone who wants to minimise their ticket price can do so by abandoning their preferences for where they sit or who they sit with. Anyone who does care where they sit or who they sit with, including families with young children, are more difficult and costly to serve so absolutely should pay the higher price.

What the airlines ought to do is make the seat booking price a non-optional add on that must be added to the purchase when you buy a ticket for a child under 8 years old (or whatever cutoff the airline is happy for a child to sit alone) and for older children you should not be able to complete the purchase without either buying booked seats or agreeing to a declaration that you understand your child may be sitting away from you and that you agree to this and will not make any kind of further requests to change seat arrangements.

Or you can just do what everyone else does and create a fuss once on board until someone moves to accommodate you. My sister does this on every single flight.

Or doesn't move! It is embarrassing and I would never put me or my children through that. Everyone looking at you, people grumbling, people knowing you are a tight *rse.

I've seen this happen loads where Noone moves. One lady, very rude about having to sit away from her child, but no one bothered, probably because they have all paid for their seat.
Even the stewards gave up, saying that they can't make people move.

You got seats together for £80 rather than £240, surely you should be happy.

Just pay to choose a seat beside your children like the rest of us do.

Definitely standard now and you take the chance if you don’t pay and pre book. Having children doesn’t guarantee you sit next to them. They class next to as any seat next to as in next to or across aisle or in front or behind. These seats are all classed as next to. Everyone else pays as part of their holiday if they want to make sure they’re sat together. Take the chance if you’re not bothered?

I said you are being unreasonable, because of this Spoke to an advisor and they said that I only needed to pre book the seats for me and my husband as the kids were young, so would automatically be ‘sat next to us’. I queried this multiple times.

You call back, ask for the recording to be brought up, and say you queried it multiple times. you should not have to pay again, especially for children.

I now never pay for seats (kids are older) and we have always been sat together.

I’ve voted yanbu because I remember the brief period between air travel being prohibitively expensive and budget travel having so many add ons that the final bill is eye wateringly expensive.

I remember feeling hard done by in the ‘90s having to pay airport taxes on top of my 1p Ryanair flight.

BA doesn’t include baggage or seats as standard now. It’s about £60 extra for a suitcase long haul, only cabin bags included in the base price.

Thanks all. I had no idea that was the case.

I’m just glad I checked today. The last thing I want is drama and stress on the flight.

I do think the original advisor should have been explicitly clear what he meant.

Years ago (long before it was possible to pre-book seats) I had to sit across the aisle from my 3 year old on a 7 hour flight. The 5 year old was behind her.

It certainly wasn’t ideal, but I’d have thought you’d be ok with a 7 and 8 year old.

Your sister's a dick!

I would have thought with 7 or 8yos, you'd be ok so long as you could see them. Just plug them into some kind of electronic device and make sure they've got plenty of snacks. My 7yo (admittedly quite confident) would be fine with that.

The problem is the u-5s imo. They really need a parent next to them. The last flight we were on, my then 2yo thought it was hilarious to fasten and unfasten their seatbelt constantly and try to crawl under the seat.

It doesn’t cost them any more. They just do it to keep the headline price down for comparison websites and then they just squeeze more money out afterwards. If you book with a code share some airlines will put families together at no extra cost and some won’t. The original booking and ticket price is the same. As well as that flight prices fluctuate based on demand at any particular time. It has absolutely nothing to do with fairness to the consumer. The prices are based on a computer algorithm that will help airlines make as much profit as they can out of as many people as they can.

It would, if they had to make it someone's job to look at the passenger list and who's travelling with who and work out a seating plan were all the threes and fours sit together and the solo travellers fill in the gaps. That's either someone's job to do that work, or someone has to write a computer programme to do it, of course it has a cost. It's easier to eliminate that cost by not letting anyone specify who they sit with, but that wouldn't be popular. Why on earth shouldn't the pickier and more demanding customers pay more than the easy-to-please customers?

every year, the same threads

Where are the children actually sat in relation to you and your DH? Because surely you can split up so each of you is next to a child?