Us Airways, travelling with minors - problems :-(

stevebrodie

All,

Is their a specific article from the CAA, FAA, TSA on regulations or policies for children sitting with their parents. Had a recent terrible experience where my 8 and 10 year old were been asked to sit seperate from both my wife and my self on a 8hr flight back from the states, and this was part of a long list of issues, for which i compaling to US Airways about. also have another post on here regarding luggage.

Many thanks

Steve Brodie

richardw

Was one child next to a parent?

neilbond007

I'm confused. On your other thread you said you were offloaded

stevebrodie wrote: »

Hi,

In this day and age i thought that no luggage could travel without its owner, is this stil lthe case and if so is thier a document from the FAA, CAA outlining this security policy. When we could not be seated together with my children even though we were promised, and no one would swap seats we were regretfully off loaded from the plane by the captain, but our luggage stayed on board ?!

Security breach ?

Sorilla

That is awful for the family to be separated like that!

jackieblack

The info only gives guidelines - 'should' rather than 'must'

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx/docs/33/docs/80/airport_data/200703/default.aspx?catid=1770&pagetype=90&pageid=9855

Family Groups

CAA guidelines ask airlines to develop procedures for the seat allocation of family groups, particularly when a group includes children. It is probable that family group members would seek each other out should an emergency evacuation be required, an action that could adversely affect the passenger flow rates towards emergency exits and might seriously affect the outcome of an evacuation.
Additionally, children and infants should be seated where they can be adequately supervised by an accompanying adult in the event of turbulence or a decompression in the cabin.
Airlines procedures should take into account the following factors:
Children, accompanied by adults, should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult. In wide-bodied aircraft, children and accompanying adults should not be separated by more than one aisle. Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults.
Seat allocation procedures for family groups and suitable seating arrangements for large parties of children should reflect the above criteria.
Whenever small numbers of infants and children are travelling together, the airline should make every effort to ensure that they are allocated seats where they can be readily supervised by the responsible accompanying adult in both normal and abnormal conditions.

Pollycat

As per neilbond007's post, the OP says they were off-loaded:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3195646

A few questions that I've already asked the OP on that thread:

Are you saying that because the airline couldn't seat you together (or at least 1 parent with 1 child together), THE AIRLINE offloaded you?

Were you kicking off about the seating?

Were you given a choice about being off-loaded or not?

What do you mean about 'promised' to be sat together?

What happened on the actual flight you took?
Were you sat together then?

What efforts were made by the crew on the original flight to get passengers to swap seats?
They usually (in my experience) do tannoy announcements asking for volunteers.

stevebrodie

As per neilbond007's post, the OP says they were off-loaded:


A few questions that I've already asked the OP on that thread:

Are you saying that because the airline couldn't seat you together (or at least 1 parent with 1 child together), THE AIRLINE offloaded you?

Correct

Were you kicking off about the seating?

No we asked at the boarding gate, and were told to speak to stewardesses, spoke to them and they said we would have to sort it out ourselves, no one was willing to swap with us. In fact some passengers were getting irrate because we wouldnt sit in the seat we were allocated.

Were you given a choice about being off-loaded or not?

No. We were standing by the aircraft entrance, My wife, who was also crying by now along with my two children was trying to sort something out, but the captain came out of the cockpit and asked us to vacate the aircraft, as we were a security risk (maybe cause we were standing by the open cockpit) and also he would try to sort something out. After he went off to speak to somebody he came back and told us we were been offloaded and would have to get the next flight as he could not seat the children with us.

What do you mean about 'promised' to be sat together?

Our original flight had us all sitting together, when we arrived at the airport we were asked if we could take an earlier flight, this we agreed to as long as we could still sit together, "No problem, i will sort that out, I promise" was the reply from the chief checking in clerk.

What happened on the actual flight you took?

On the actual flight, we sat one parent with one child, as our original seats, logicly, had gone by now

Were you sat together then?

Two by two, which was fine.

What efforts were made by the crew on the original flight to get passengers to swap seats?

None at all, in fact quite the opposite, everybody just seemed to push the problem onto the next person, the stewardesses actually commented that they would not ask any passenger to move/swap seats.

They usually (in my experience) do tannoy announcements asking for volunteers.

dmg24

So you did get on the flight that you were originally booked on?

ferf1223

stevebrodie wrote: »

Were you given a choice about being off-loaded or not?

No. We were standing by the aircraft entrance, My wife, who was also crying by now along with my two children was trying to sort something out, but the captain came out of the cockpit and asked us to vacate the aircraft, as we were a security risk (maybe cause we were standing by the open cockpit) and also he would try to sort something out. After he went off to speak to somebody he came back and told us we were been offloaded and would have to get the next flight as he could not seat the children with us.

I'm just guessing, but I would imagine that your wife and kids may have been potentially upsetting other passengers which could have snowballed into something more...so the captain asked you to leave in order to diffuse a potential situation...people get twitchy when other passengers are acting in any way unusually on a plane, especially in this day and age...given that other passengers were getting 'irate' leads me to think that it wasn't necessarily a quiet and calm situation or it went on for quite some time? Maybe I am misreading.

Other thing I don't quite get though - you were promised that you would be seated together on the earlier flight - were you not given boarding cards from which you could see that you were not sat together?

richardw

Generally speaking, don't most airlines' conditions of carriage say that passengers must do as requested by the crew? It appears this crew didn't want to issue seat re-allocation instructions to passengers, I have seen it done before with the CSD being very firm with passengers.

Caz3121

I guess this could have been avoided if it had been made clear to the OP when he asked if he could get onto an earlier flight by saying "yes we can get you on but there are no seats left together" then the OP could have said...ok I'll wait for the flight I was booked on