Paying for advance seat reservation

[chefspark]

Hi There,

I've booked a return flight with Emirates from London to Brisbane. We are a family of 4 and emirates want to charge about £25 per person per leg to reserve a specific seat in advance, so that's £25 x 4 people x 4 legs!

An extra £400 on the total trip is a lot of money. We can reserve seats for free 48 hours before the flight and I was wondering if there were any other families out there who had been faced with this dilemma??

My kids are aged 5 and 7 and we obviously don't want to run the risk of having them sit in seats away from us but I was wondering if most people reserve their seats when checking in online rather than paying for the privileged in advance?

Cheers

I would pay this additional charge if you can.

We don’t pay a scheduled airline. Most keep families together and at worst it’s 2 and 2. You can presumably swap seats when you check in. Do Emirates do 24 hours or longer?

With the best will in the world you are not going to end up in 4 separate seats........don't pay, worst scenario will be 2 & 2.

We have flown with Emirates eve real times and always just end up spaying for the seats. We do, though ,fly in school holidays. I wouldn't take the risk if you are travelling at a popular time.

I don't think they can legally sit your kids away from you. Worst case would be 2+2 or 3+1. Only pay if you really want all 4 to sit together.

That does seem like a lot but emirates are pretty cheap compared to other airlines as far as I see. Most are packaging extras like this to bring the cost of the ticket down and then you pay extra for what you really want to (extra baggage allowance, preferred seats etc) Singapore airlines have just introduced a similar charge but I noticed that they still let families with children in the booking reserve certain seats in advance for free.

Personally I'd pay for the advance booking as it makes it easier to plan your trip if you know what configuration you are flying in. I'm doing a similar route with 5 of us and I've booked all our seats in advance - if I'd had to pay I would have done it also.

I don't think they can legally sit your kids away from you. Worst case would be 2+2 or 3+1. Only pay if you really want all 4 to sit together.

That's so funny. Er, yes they can. Have a look at a few threads on here on the topic.

I consider the seat booking as part of the holiday cost. And because I've paid for my family to sit together there's no way we would move or swap for people who have chosen not to.

I had this with Emirates flying NZ to UK and back - me, DH and DDs ages 8 and 6. It would have cost us about NZ$800 to book seats. In the end, I didn't as it was just too much - we ended up with a row of four across the middle on all flights (which is what i would have booked). All our flights out were at capacity too as we were caught up with the British and Irish Lions fans returning from the NZ tour.

The advantage is that most people who book will not book the middle row. I think you will be fine to risk it - worse case scenario is you will be split into 2 lots of 2.

I wouldn't pay it and take a risk as it's likely that you'll all be together anyway.

Pay it op. They can (and will if all other seats are allocated) split you up.
If other passengers have paid to reserve their seats they won’t (quite rightly) take kindly to being asked to move to accommodate your family and they have every right to refuse.
It’s just a stress you don’t need.

I think "together" can also mean being in adjacent rows. The question is, if you don't get put next to each other would you expect people who had paid to move for you?

As you will probably be flying in a jumbo you could well be seated quite a long way from your children. Sadly more and more airlines will only seat people together if they pay, so I wouldn't risk not paying for allocated seats.

Not Aus but the last few times we've gone long haul at a peak time there's been very little choice left 48hrs before, even when sat refreshing the page till it's time. And I have witnessed families spread across the plane when nobody is willing to move.

We've just come back from Australia. I did the 48 hour check in, online, and was horrified to see that DH and I had been allocated seats separate from each other (and poor seats as well). Although I could change them, and managed to get seats together, there were very few seats left.

But then I discovered, when sorting things out for our return trip, that I could select seats earlier than the 48 hour check in, using the airline's app. (I don't know if I could have done this online as I didn't have access to a computer/tablet at that stage - just the phone). So try that way and see if you can select your seats now for free. We flew with Singapore Air, by the way.

We usually pay for extra legroom seats anyway, sp we end up paying for allocated seats.

When DD and I flew to Rome with Jet2 a couple of years ago I decided not to pay for allocated seats. They kept emailing me to remind me to do so. In the end I checked online how many seats were available to book, and there were just 4 seats left, at different ends of the plane. I quickly paid up because DD suffers from anxiety and didn't want to sit next to a complete stranger.

Airlines don't care. I much preferred the olden days of flying when no-one prebooked seats, luggage was included and you got a meal and drinks on the flight as standard all included in the price of the flight.

I think airlines should show the full cost of the flight and show a discount for unbooked seats, no meals and no hold luggage.

I agree with others I would pay it if I were you. It really is a stress you don’t need. I’m quite a nervous traveler and this would really have me on edge.
I think it’s the pits that a scheduled flight with an airline like emirates can get away with this. They are holding you to ransom.
I have just returned from oz , we went business class there and back. It was a wonderful experience which I’ll need to win the Lottery to do again