Ryanair - do you get seated with your family if you book the most basic tickets?

[Fivemoreminutes1]

We’ve got the cheapest of the cheap tickets - no selection of seat beforehand and they get allocated to us when we turn up at the airport. When we had the option to pay extra for seat selection, it warned us that if we didn’t cough up we most likely wouldn’t be sitting together. Just wondering whether they really do that though.

Ryanair lay their cabin crew off for several months a year to avoid them gaining employment rights. And they charge them for bottled water whilst working.

Why anyone is surprised when they want to scalp the customers is beyond me. I’d rather walk than fly with them.

If you are flying with an under-12, they will be seated next to one adult in your party. They enforce this by making you select a free seat reservation for the child and a paid reservation for at least one adult at the time of booking the flight. You will not be able to complete the booking for an under-12 without going through the seat reservation process.

If all passengers are 12 or above and you don't select a seat, you probably will be split up.

Sad to read of the OPs happiness at being separated. As for peace and quiet, I am told there are various selling opportunities and some tune if they land at or before the scheduled time.

I cannot speak from experience as I won't give a penny to Mr O'Leary as I think he is a bully.

We had some fucking twats that hadn’t booked seats and delayed our flight by 30mins fussing about seats.

Book a friggin seat

What @BlackLambAndGreyFalcon said. I have been on at least 6 ryanair flights with my 8 yo in the last 2 years (only airline that flies direct to where my family lives) and you have to select seats if checking in children (under 12s). I thought we usually get to choose free seats for dd and one adult and only pay for 2nd adult seat but I might be wrong and we pay for both adults.
If you let them assign you seats, they are likely to give middle row seats as these are least likely to be bought by other customers.

Yes child allocation next to one adult is free. I was able to allocate me and 2x dc on a row, then paid £6 for dh to be on the same row.

Been on about 10 Ryanair flights over the last three years travelling with 4-6 people. One one of those flights 2 of the people were next to each other. On 2 flights I had an empty seat next to me. On 3 flights they put one of my dc (over 12 but still kids) in the seats where you have to open the door and then had to shuffle people about. I think their system would allow them to put people under the same booking next to each other if they wanted to, but they don’t want to.

We had some fucking twats that hadn’t booked seats and delayed our flight by 30mins fussing about seats

Had this a few times too. My teenage dcs were across both in aisle seats only 1 row apart and and one of them moved further away from the other so a woman could sit next to her ds. They thought she meant a little boy and a man of about 25 slid into the seat. Another flight a woman had booked one of the more expensive seats near the front and a man was in it and told her to go to his seat near the back. She almost did it but decided to stand her ground. She was totally in the right but there were about 80 people on the steps behind her and it felt like ages. Probably only about 4-5 mins.

If you want to sit with your family you have to pay for seat selection. They will seat you apart if you don't.

We had some fucking twats that hadn’t booked seats and delayed our flight by 30mins fussing about seats
Yes we have had similar. Including someone being quite aggressive with the cabin crew and demanding a particular seat even though they had not paid for it saying they were not going to be blackmailed into paying for a particular seat.
The flights are cheap everyone knows they are a no frills airline and if they want to sit with people they need to pay extra

Booking seats is around £8 each way depending on airlines

Wouldn't it be easier if they just added seat price to flight then can choose own seats

So instead of £70 plus booking seats £8 make flight £78

Do you remember when they didn't allocate seats? Think it was easyJet. That was a free for all running through the tunnel!

Easyjet is better with stuff like this as in the app you can see which seats are occupied long before the boarding opens, so if you want you can hold off and not pay then when you online check in it basically let's you decide where to sit. If the flught looks like it's filling up you can take the hit and pay in advance.

I never book seats and we've never been separated. We fly at least 5 times per year. Maybe I'm just lucky but my extended family are never separated either. We usually fly jet2, easyJet or Ryanair.

Fly with them every month or so . For the last few years they definitely deliberately separate you.
As pp have said you can be seated on your own in a row but your travelling companions will not be seated with you . And I check in on the dot !

There are 7 of us and we travel in different combinations but not once in the last few years have we been seated together.
It's fine, I enjoy sitting alone.

EasyJet always seat us together .

There was a recent TikTok of a woman on a plane holding her baby. The toddler was across the aisle and the DH was behind the mum.
The toddler screamed half the flight and mum seemed to think the woman next to her should have swapped seats so she could sit with her DD so the ‘seated with an adult’ can be across the aisle or sat in front or behind, it doesn’t mean in a seat actually next to.

Flew recently v deliberately split up . My DC are old enough that we don’t bother. It’s not like the tickets are super cheap any more so we don’t want to pay more for seat selection. No complaints from us thought we know we won’t sit together.

‘Weight & balance’ is absolutely a thing. Weight is critical for aircraft of all types for safety reasons. The Captain has to know how much her aircraft weighs in order to calculate the correct fuel load for the sector. That’s why hold bags are weighed at check-in. Any cargo in the hold is also weighed, obviously.
The airline’s Departure Control System (DCS) then allocates a nominal, standardised weight for every adult male, adult female & child (ususally defined as under 12) on board. The remaining passengers are then distributed in seats around the aircraft to optimise balance in both longitudinal (front to back) & lateral (side to side) axes. Children are usually sat next to an adult on the same Passenger Name Record (PNR). Other criteria are also applied for Passengers of Restricted Movement (PR
M) Unaccompanied Minors (UM) etc etc.
And no, they don’t deliberately split up families. How it works is that first the passengers who have booked specific seats are allocated to those seats in the cabin. Then, the remaining passengers are distributed around the remaining seats in order to optimise balance

Ryan air deliberately split you up, whereas with EasyJet early check in and allocated together, we generally fly ej

No way will they seat you together, you have more chance of winning the lottery. If you want to sit together, pay to do so.

And some other poor fucker has to sit with your delightful kids instead? Seriously one thing that bugs the life out of me is people who do this. Just pay the bloody money and put yourself and your kids together. Nobody wants to sit with someone elses kids and nobody wants to swap seats with you either if they have paid for their own. Just pay up.

Given that Ryanair forces you to select seats of the dc are under 12, surely if you cam opt out it means they are teenagers anyways. So who cares if you have to sit next to them.

Of course balancing the weight of the plane is a genuine thing. But other airlines seem to manage to achieve it without needing to seat people in the middle seats throughout the plane. It’s a mystery isn’t it?

I can’t believe people think they don’t purposely split you up. Me and DP (so Person A and Person B) flew with another couple (C and D) but we hadn’t booked together - each couple had a separate booking. We checked in at virtually the exact same time - we were sat next to each other as we did it online. Allocated random seats… Person A ended up with Person C, and Person B ended up with Person D! Obviously that was no bother to us as unbeknownst to Ryanair we all knew each other but we did all have a confused chuckle as to why they didn’t seat the two people from the booking together if there were two empty seats available which they were going to fill with two people. Had several situations like this in the last few years of flying with them - I fly with them approx 3 times a year. In fact I don’t think we’ve ever been seated together in the last 3 years!

It's known that they do this.

In April, Ryanair had DP and I on separate rows as the only person on the row. We moved after takeoff. There were three rows together like this; across the aisle, the same three rows were fully filled, so it doesn’t seem to be a case of separation for weight distribution purposes. We did move after takeoff.

It was similar but not quite so empty on the way home.