Paid for seats on ryan air and kids still sat separately

[Hookahchakkah]

Has anyone had any success getting a refund and compensati on.? We paid the extra to ensure we were with the kids all together and they sat all four of us completely separately, not even across an aisle or one row away like five and twenty five rows away from each other

🙄

ok so did you get names? especially of the one who said they knew a family had been separated?

Write to the head of the company, anyone else you can find in the company and at least ask for your seat booking money back.

That's pretty shit, tbh.

I find this hard to believe.

Ryanair mandates that children aged 2 to 11 must be seated next to an accompanying adult.

Why would four seats that you had booked, paid for, selected, checked in on and been given boarding passes for, etc. be given away to random adults. It does not make sense.

Presumably cist about £24 (assuming £5.99 rock bottom prices) but you and your DH were sat together? So can't complain about this. And the dc sat together? Why didn't you sit in adult child combination?

Chalk it up to ryanair shittiness. They don't care and you'll have no joy getting them to refund.

I would be pursuing a refund quite publicly on their social media. That's really poor on their part.

they are so weird - we didnt pay for seats to be together (outrageous imo) and they put us all together for free 😂Did you raise it with them?

That’s really shit OP and i really hope you get your money back!

They’ve likely changed aircraft last minute and just allocated everyone randomly.

Sounds like Ryanair
the 10yo should have been seated with one of their parents.

I would not have been happy if my 10yo was sat alone with a stranger who may not have wanted to help them in an emergency.

make a complaint publicly on social media and request a refund and an explanation as to why your 10yo was seated alone without his parents despite you paying for 4 seats together.

It does sound like you got to the gate last minute if you were one of the last on board and were actually being told to sit down or they’d miss their window. That’s a lesson. Be there in plenty of time. Even if you’ve paid, they fuck things about. Don’t be last.

You should go after refunds though, and complain about the behaviour of the cabin crew.

That's awful, I have had this with Aegean - so not even a budget airline - we paid for seats that I'd selected and then they reallocated us different seats when boarding passes were printed, we were separated into 2 groups. I didn't complain but was peed off, but if we'd been completely separated from DC I would have.
No idea why they change your seat allocation after you've selected seats and paid extra for the privilege of doing so!! but it happened to me too:(

If you paid for seats to be sat together then you should definitely get a refund. All the other fuss you’re making is a load of drama. A 10 year old is absolutely fine to be sat on a plane for a 2 hour flight, especially if they are with a sibling. It sounds like you were late to board if you were one of the last ones on. I
travelled alone as a child all the time from the age of 8. No big deal really. I also never pay for seats when I travel with dc, 6,10,14. Most of the time we’re sat together but we were recently separated on a flight to Kenya. It’s not the end of the world.

Take it all the way OP! They treated you appallingly. How thick are those staff if they didn’t realise there may be an anxious parent or two if they separated a family who paid for seats together?!

One bit of feedback - always get to the gate early! If you hadn’t been last to queue up then you might not have got split. It sucks but it’s true.

Yes indeed. If you were at the gate as soon as it opened, it may not have happened, and if it did you’d have had more time to dig your heels in.

I’ve never gotten money back from Ryanair despite various mess ups. I mean you are entitled to your money back and you can try but I wouldn’t invest too much time into it

It's Ryanair. Why would you find this hard to believe?

Or have you not flown with Ryanair?

The op has clearly stated that she asked for answers, as to why they'd been moved. She obviously found this hard to believe to.

Just because it hasn't happened to you, doesn't mean it hasn't happened to anybody else.

Unlikely they will give you a refund, even if you deserve one, but will tie you up in knots till you give up.
Make a stand on social media...FB, Instagram, X .....post on all platforms on their pages and just keep reposting when they try and delete you! If nothing else they will get as annoyed as you are! This us the only way I have got answers from companies who try to ignore me. Doesn't always work....

Sounds like he was sat closer to the children for one thing. And possibly not on rhe wrong side of the drinks trolley.

And yes I was thinking “what a terrible man sat doing nothing whilst OP struggles”.

Unfortunately, it is often the case in our society that if a man asks, everyone is suddenly all too happy to help.

I don’t know why people are bending over backwards to try to make it your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. We had this happen to us with another airline and a four year old. Maybe people don’t realise how often it can happen.

Everyone kept saying that they couldn’t do anything and pushing us to the next person. It wasn’t until we were at the gate refusing to board that they finally changed seats so that at least one of us could sit with our child. We were prepared to give up on the flight entirely as there was no way we could travel sitting separately.

A 10 year old is indeed fine many rows away from their parents, until there is an emergency and the parents then want to go and help their child, or the plane is being evacuated and the parents are trying to move 20 rows back to ensure their child gets out, but the aisle is full of other passengers trying to get to the emergency exits.

That's outrageous! I would kick up a massive fuss over this! How stressful for you!

Op, you should def put this all over social media- make parents aware not to pay for seating as you don’t get the seats anyway!

We went with Ryanair recently and didn’t pay for seats and we were as far from each other as possible, which was fine but my youngest started getting upset as she’s developed a fear of flying (that we knew nothing of until we got on the flight the week previously) so as soon as the person with the ticket next to her got on I asked if we could swap which they did.
you do have to get on first and ask before people sit down to swap- as soon as people sit down they don’t want to move. However with paid for seats this shouldn’t be an issue!

hope you get the refund xx

Is it possible the OP booked an exit row without realising it and at the last minute the check-in or gate staff realised the safety implications of children in that row?

We were once delayed 13 hours by a technical fault on a Ryanair flight to Dublin before Brexit. Staff proceeded to hand out notices to all passengers claiming (erroneously) that EU compensation rules did not apply to Ryanair.

@Hookahchakkah How old was the other child?

Really?