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.

I think I am starting to like this PM.

Its absolutely stupid and outrageous airlines even thought of this pay by seat thing.

Of course the norm when you book a ticket should be that you are together. Children or not!

I welcome this measure, which I believe is a clarification of existing rules/legislation? I do not think though that this means you all get to sit together in a nice row. I think some airlines will sit parents diagonally from children (rows in front and behind) and across aisles.

Exactly

Lol.

So you’d rather be sitting next to a distressed child who’s been seated AWAY from their parent 👌🏻

Don’t be a twat!

flights were a lot more expensive in those days. People paid for all the extras as part of a unified fare. The budget airlines broke into the market based on a model that breaks up the cost and removes inefficiency for them and the customer.

There are still airlines and fares that bundle everything. They are usually more expensive than a budget airline but not always and not if you are brining luggage and want specific seats.

Unlike luggage or food, specified seats are not an additional cost to airlines.

I don't have a problem with the current model. You get to choose which extras you want to pay for. If you don't need a bag in the hold you don't pay for one. If you go into McDonald's for a burger you pay for a burger, if you don't want a drink you don't pay for it. Imagine if McD's started charging you more for a burger but the price included a drink - whether you wanted one or not. The low cost airlines work on the same principle, you pay for what you want.

The issue is whether the cost of the extras is reasonable or extortionate. I suspect that if you examined the airlines' accounts the cost is inflated, but part of that will be to cover the fact that they make a minuscule profit from those who choose to pay only the base flight price, no extras.

If people buying cheaper seats didn’t want it airlines wouldn’t have met demand but doing more if the bundling costs.

You and others would have just chosen the more expensive flights where it’s not split up and the low cost airlines wouldn’t have thrived.

It’s consumer led.

Scheduled flights were that expensive before the budget airlines. I paid about the same for a flight a regularly took in the 80’s as some fares 30 or 40 years later. It was a domestic flight lasting about 80 minutes.

Sensible parents would book a seat with their kids. 🤷‍♀️

Yep. And if there’s demand for the flights that just add it all together then people can buy that.

Obviously the newer model has been popular.

It is not comparable to a drink from McDonalds with your meal - that costs extra to provide. It would be more like having to pay extra for your chips and burger to arrive at the same time rather than them delivery half a dozen other people’s orders in between the different parts of your order just to force you to pay extra to have it all at once.

Airlines are going to optimise and maximise their profits no matter what. Fares won’t get cheaper after this regulation.

The budget model just doesn’t rely on people paying for what they use. Because they discourage luggage they reduce the weight of the plane and turn around times. They don’t need to manage seat allocation so that keeps costs low.

Additional regulation pushes prices up. That’s not a judgement on my part but it is a reality.

So you think it is reasonable for the safety of everyone on the planet to be compromised by the fact that some people might prefer to save an artificial cost that the airline imposes?

But their lives and safety are worth more than £1000, right?

They don’t need to manage seat allocation so that keeps costs low.

Managing seat allocation doesn’t incur any additional costs.

Years ago they seated people booking together all together

Years ago, before budget airlines and before online check-in, you could not reserve seats in advance. At all. If you were travelling in a family group or with people you wanted to sit with, you had to arrive at check in with loads of time to spare so that there was still plenty of space in the cabin.

I can't imagine not being a parent who tried to get to their child in an emergency. I've always made sure I booked seats with my children, even when traveling with them as adults though. I know I'd try to get to them. Glad they are next to me.

It’s not managing it it’s the fee people pay to get the seats. That’s revenue.

Let me call you a waaambulance. Such hardship you are facing.

Yes and No

Unbundling the package an benefit solo travellers who don't care where they sit and only have a tiny under seat bag

I'm not averse to "pay for what you need / want"

This is a very good point. I travel on Ryanair quite a lot with my family. They are teens so we never book a seat.

The algorithm always seats us at the four corners of the plane, as far as possible from each other. Which we quite like!
We are not the only people doing this so that's a fair chunk of people not paying for seats.

It hadn't occurred to me that we were selfishly pushing up prices for the seat bookers.

I would definitely prefer this to be regulated.

The child free can continue to benefit from not having to pay for their children's flights as well as their own.

Exactly. Flights can be much cheaper due to this.

And despite a fair few posts saying they preferred higher cost flights it’s not what’s happened overall with consumer demand.

The base price of a ticket would reflect all that though if it was included. It wasn’t ‘free’ it was included in the price. I’d rather not pay for that and be able to have more opportunity to travel.