Airlines forced to seat children with parents

[ibeentothetop]

Thanks Burnham, now it’ll be more expensive for child free people like me to pick a seat. I can’t believe that things like this even need to be legislated for.

It’s just a return to how things were before budget airlines had fake costs

Sure but if OP is child free and is posting on MN instead of, say, the child free reddit subthread, then it sure seems like they're just here looking for a fight with some lowly breeders.

Pathetic isn't it. Yet another workaround for people who don't parent or control their finances properly.

i always pay to sit with my family. We dont want to start our holiday by being separated or stressed about seats

years ago, we risked it and werent together. I couldn’t hold my baby during landing because there was another baby next to me and they only allowed one baby per row. We had to wake her and move to my husband ajd then she cried for 40 mins 😆

Quite.

That sounds good to me.

oooh what a shame, this is a non issue and is safest for CHILDREN.

Oh I get it, paint me as an out of touch Tory who gets riled up on algorithms.

I’ve actually been a labour voter my whole life til they decided defining what a women is was a trick question.

I work in politics so yes I do watch Parliament along with other things - in fact I believe it was his own social media channels that announced the seating policy. Why - where did you hear about it?

Those moaning about extras do know full service airlines do still exist? Obviously they cost a lot more but those budget airlines are just money making scammers according to this thread. I am old enough to remember when budget airlines were not a thing and subsequently the ability to travel regularly was out of reach for lots of families. I am happy to travel from my local airport, often for less that the price of a days parking in my city centre, pay for whatever size bag I need, the seat I want and food and drinks if I fancy it.

But the price of flights has fallen dramatically. All those things weren’t free. They were included in the cost. I only take hand luggage most of the time, I don’t need a nasty reheated meal on a 3 hour flight, I haven’t read a printed newspaper for 20 years, and I only drink water on flights, so why would I want to pay for all that stuff? I don’t care where they sit me either, and I didn’t care if they sit me next to my partner or not. It’s a couple of hours - I pop in an audio book and go to sleep regardless of whether my companion is there or not.

I think all flight booking websites should have a question you have to answer before you can pay for more than one person, to choose between "none of our group cares at all where we sit or if we sit together" or "our group contains a young child who must be near a parent, or it's important to us that we are seated near each other". For efficient packing of a full flight, you need at least SOME people in the first category so it is reasonable to give those people a discount so they can be placed in whatever random seats are left over once the second-category people have had their seats allocated. There can also be a third category who pay a premium to choose specific seats. If everyone has the right to be seated together and choose their seats the net result will be inefficiently packed planes with empty seats which puts up fares for everyone.

I travelled with my teenage son (so didn’t need to sit together) and Ryanair allocated us random seats at opposite ends of the plane. We flew home easyJet and got allocated seats next to each other. The Ryanair flight wasn’t full and I’m sure they allocate random seats to try and force you to pay for them. I checked in for both flights at the earliest opportunity.

that is so untrue!

Just make booking a seat mandatory for everyone?

If a family gets on a plane gambling that people will move for them, & it’s a plane to a family-friendly resort at the beginning of the school holidays, I can see things getting complicated.

We always pay to book seats together however coming back from Mexico a few years ago the ground crew gave zero shits about pre booking and just randomly issued boarding passes! We ended up sat one behind the other all in window seats with our 5 year old sat next to a young couple. They took one look at her and quickly offered to swap so we sit with her 😂

I'd rather pay 228 quid to be sure that they won't be seated next to someone who might molest them or be unkind to them on the plane. to know that, in an emergency, they are with me. All these things have happened. I mean, I won't hurt your kid, but I won't be as careful as you are with what I view on the movie screen or with a hot coffee because I'm not in charge of them.

Yeah, I'm monitoring the seat map and if it starts looking too full then I may need to even though it's a complication

I wouldn't have minded but, if she kept trying to talk to me and wouldn't be dissuaded, I'd tell her I didn't want to talk. No attention from me other than the most perfunctory.

Hope it's not too late by then.

We went to Argentina recently and the airline wanted £760 to reserve seats. For two of us. In business class! I could not get my 'NO!' out fast enough. It's absolute joke, though the award for utter stupidity needs to go to Ryanair. The flight must have been only about 30% full but they still seated me and my husband at opposite ends of the plane. This wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't claim that their systems aren't set up to do precisely this. I smell a massive heap of BS!

Once again the outrage of people not distinguishing between paying for chosing a specific seat (front, aisle, exit row) and "just any two seats together".

About 9 years ago, my husband and I were separated from our children on a flight to America. There wasn’t even an option to pay extra to sit together. Once we got on the flight, we realised lots of other parents were in the same situation.
Thankfully, a man with a window seat kindly volunteered to swap with my husband, so he could sit with both of our children. I doubt the guy wanted to sit next to two kids throughout a 10 flight.
Since then I thought airlines had to ensure that at least one parent is seated with their child. I’ve always thought it was a health and safety issue not having parents seated with their children anyway, so either way I’m glad about the new policy even though my kids are now teens.

No, if you book a child they would be attached to an adjacent seat AT BOOKING so the parent would have to decide at that point whether they want to pay for both they and their child to sit in first class, economy or somewhere else.

Its what and how the media pull it out and SM take along with small stuff and that is what tends to go viral

getting to work on public transport is important, improving services and making it affordable

for the first time this year it was cheaper for me to get the train than drive. to a destination 150 miles away

and again this autumn I have to travel 350 miles - so 700 round trip and it is cheaper by train than driving or plane