Not selecting seats on plane... risky?

[Worriedmotheroftwo]

Flying with Wizzair. 2 parents 2 children. Not selected seats. Selecting seats for all 4 of us would cost us £80 total. Their policy is to seat a parents with a child...

We will obviously try to check in and get seats sorted at first opportunity. Happy to be split up as long as each of our children is with one of us. But what if the plane is full of people who have booked seats though and there's not 2 pairs of seats available for us? Would we not get to go on the flight?

On one hand, £80 is a lot of extra money. On the other hand, I don't want us to not get on the flight at all!

We haven't travelled much with children so not sure how risky this is. Would welcome opinions. Many thanks!

I always paid for seats together when DD was small. Last flight we did (RyanAir) was the first time I haven’t bothered. DD is 14. Got lucky and had seats together on the way out, opposite ends of the plane coming back. Only take the risk if you are happy with your DC being seated away from you. If not, pay to eliminate that risk.

@Worriedmotheroftwo Just to reinterate OP as there have been a lot of responses. Call the airline and request to be seated together due to your sons autism diagnosis, they will do that for free. Even if it’s just one set of two together, could have your costs if you decide to pay or at least mean your son will deffo have a parent

I just check in the second check in comes open. Normally midnight 30 days before. Done this for the past 20 odd years and never missed out. Annoying to wake up at midnight mind you but only takes a few minutes as long as you have everything ready and API done before hand. 🙏

The OP didn’t say it was £160 in total, she said it was £80 so its more likely to be for all of the flights.

Agreed £80 is not nothing, but I would definitely pay it if I had a 4 yr old and 6 yr old to ensure we were sat together, and by that I mean in advance knowing where our seats are and not making anyone else move. Or contact Wizz Air to see if we could be seated for free because of DCs autism diagnosis. Even if that just covers one DP and DC then it reduces overall cost to £40.

i bet nobody who has said ‘i wouldn’t mind moving to accommodate a parent and child’ has not paid for their seat…

There is a high dose of sarcasm regarding GIVING them my energy drink - i dont like sharing lol Having to rebuy my energy drink at an airport is expensive

But its not my job to police the kid. So if the kid stole a sip of my drink (energy drink or booze) when i went to the toilet or fell asleep, its not my fault. Its the parents for not watching their kid.

Like you, id watch what i wanted too, im a big true crime fan, maybe not the images someone wants a kid overseeing

Honestly we have never paid it oldest is 14. Never been separated ever.

Travel monthly with Wizz, also ex airline booker. One adult is always sat with one child, might get lucky near the other two but often not. With Wizz the 1st adult will be sat with the first named child. Usually one set of us are in the horrible tight seats at the back but we know that so be prepared to be there and be beside the loos and the people who like to stand there for the whole journey.

Ryanair once split us but I called and told them they were very welcome to have my 3 year old sat beside someone else for the flight but unsure how the other passenger would have liked it. They apologised and moved us together for free instantly

When they say they will seat families together it might be across an aisle or in the seat in front or behind not necessarily next to them.
If they are happy to accept that that's ok. But I have been on a flight with someone who complained because they hadn't paid for a seat and their child was seated across the aisle from them.

You usually ask if people can move because you didn't want to pay for allocated seats? 🙄🙄 I hate being asked to move. it makes me feel awkward and rubbish and selfish if I say no. Just book your bloomin seats like the rest of us!

Wizz air are awful, they tried to sit our 2 year old alone next to strangers when we flew with them and couldn’t seem to grasp why that wasn’t acceptable (it was a few years ago and before you could pay extra to book seats), i wouldn’t risk it.

I hate when people don't book as they end up forcing the ones that do book to move anyway and just lose money and give no compensation or refund for them actually pre plannig

You’ve misunderstood, of course whole families who pay can sit together as can anyone, I was saying I think it should be policy that a young child can be next to an adult without having to pay.

It is. It's on the wizzair policy I linked to ages ago.

Just flew WizzAir this week as a family of 5 (youngest is 11, oldest 14). We didn’t pay to sit together and we were 3 & 2 both ways. I wouldn’t have asked anyone to move if we didn’t sit together though and checked in just under 24 hours prior to departure.

Ok. Apologies @PurpleFlower1983
I didn’t read your comment correctly.

So in terms of your comment I disagree. I don’t think there should be any exemptions. If one has to pay everyone should. Its a low cost airline and they rely on the extra income from giving this choice. If some people are exempt everyone’s ticket price would go up.
If people want a guarantee I think they pay for it on the low cost airline or chose a different airline that doesn’t charge.

Agree.
People should absolutely not be asking
They have no right to make others feel uncomfortable.

You can’t be forced to move. Although I’ve seen someAmerican airlines flying within America can be quite aggressive with people over this.

An evacuation is exactly where it would make a difference - do you think parents would be heading straight to the exit without their children? They could be rushing all over the plane to grab them, impeding the flow of others out of the aircraft.

Kids are required to be near parents though and the advice is always to help children before yourself.
So the parents for example would need to put a face mask on their kids ( if they can’t do it themselves) and then they would go back to their own seat and deal with their own. Not ideal obviously.
Of course if this isn’t something they feel they could do they could always just pay for seats next to their kids. Easy.

It's not a child tax, the fee applies to absolutely anyone who wants to sit next to the friends or family they are travelling with. The low cost airlines deliberately make the base price of the flight as cheap as possible then you have various entirely optional extras that can be built in to the booking to make your flight as comfortable and convenient as you like, but you have to accept that it costs. DH and I never pay extra on short hop flights to sit together. The flight is often not full anyway, so one of us can usually move once boarding is complete. If not, it's only a couple of hours, hardly the end of the world. If it was a longer flight and it really mattered then we'd pay it.

I know Ryanair will deliberately randomly allocate your seats away from one another even when they've been made as one booking. I know it seems incredibly petty and bloody minded, but this is the era of cut-throat price slashing and smoke and mirrors tactics. What looks like a £30 flight to lure you in can end up being a £100 once you've added the bits that make it tolerable. But the fact remains that for adult travellers on quick trips with no need of luggage and no particularly strong feelings about boarding early, or sitting by the window or sitting with their companion or whatever, can fly extremely cheaply.

People need to just accept it and stop feeling so hard done by. Book the flight you need and want. Don't book the flight experience you don't want and then bleat about it once you are on board. Everyone knows you are just on the cadge and trying to save a few quid. It's embarrassing.

What you are essentially doing by refusing to pay for allocated seats with your children, is the equivalent of booking standard second class tickets on British Rail then marching into the First Class carriage and demanding to be allowed to sit in a seat that's been reserved by somebody who paid more than you did, for the privilege, and acting like it's the most reasonable request in the world. It's not. You are getting less because you happily paid less. You want more? You pay more. It's not that hard to understand.

What you are essentially doing by refusing to pay for allocated seats with your children, is the equivalent of booking standard second class tickets on British Rail then marching into the First Class carriage and demanding to be allowed to sit in a seat that's been reserved by somebody who paid more than you did, for the privilege, and acting like it's the most reasonable request in the world. It's not. You are getting less because you happily paid less. You want more? You pay more. It's not that hard to understand.

Oh so true!
It's menu pricing which means you pay for an array of things, a specific seat being one of them.

One day it will happen that a child who is near but not next to their parents is crushed by people trying to evacuate a plane, and then, too late, they'll change the policy to put the children in the seat next to a parent.

I don't have children so I'm not arguing this from a perspective of personal entitlement, it's merely that I am interested in disasters and tragedies throughout history that, retrospectively, were 'accidents waiting to happen' and usually the driving force was corporate greed/stinginess - this situation strikes me as falling into the same bracket. But no one will listen until after the tragedy.

The thing is, if parents aren't willing to pay a few quid to optimise the safety of their children, I'm not sure that anyone else is going to be persuaded to make changes.

I don't disagree that this is partly a reflection of corporate greed. But it's also greed on the part of the parents who can afford to fly off on holiday but don't want to pay a little bit extra to protect their kids.