MSE News: 'Family tax': Dad's outrage as Ryanair tries to seat 3yo away from family

musical_norwich

This is a flight safety and safeguarding issue.

If you place young children away from parents, in the event of a fire or crash, parents will try to reach their children rather than exit the plane as quickly as possible. This will delay their exit but also impede the exit of other passengers. Look at what happened in the Manchester Airport fire and you will soon realise what a difference every second makes in an evacuation.

Ryanair is clearly not making every effort to seat family groups together if it is randomly allocating seating. I or any other remotely able person could very quickly write an algorithm to check for children in a booking and seat them with adults in the group. Ryanair is clearly not trying to seat family groups together. In addition, the forced separation of children increases the risks of children being harmed by other adults. Ryanair makes more money but puts children and passengers at risk.

This is also about regulation. The Irish Aviation Authority is not fit for purpose. I wrote to it about Ryanair seating a person with an arm in a sling who had paid for a legroom seat in the emergency exit aisle which would clearly impede an evacuation. Ryanair refused to move them. On the same flight Ryanair also threatened to throw a Spanish mother off the plane when she refused to be separated from her very young daughter. The Spanish Aviation Authority and the CAA were appalled but could do nothing as the Irish Aviation Authority regulates Ryanair. The Irish authorities, unlike the Spanish and British, didn't even reply.

Separating children from their parents, immobile passengers in the emergency exit aisles, no defibrillators. You pay your money, you take your choice. But Ryanair shouldn't be allowed to behave like this. If we pay for regulators, they should regulate.

joe1906

This happened to me on a flight with Italia we were all over the plane including my 3 yr old son.

I made it the airlines problem.

When the staff complained about my son wondering around the plane and getting in the way I just told them it serves them right for the stupidity of splitting a family and I was not interested in the fact that my son was getting on there nerves and in the way.

Don't complain make it hard for the staff and let them complain to there bosses maybe then they will sort it and see the folly of there actions.

Pollycat

joe1906 wrote: »

This happened to me on a flight with Italia we were all over the plane including my 3 yr old son.

I made it the airlines problem.

When the staff complained about my son wondering around the plane and getting in the way I just told them it serves them right for the stupidity of splitting a family and I was not interested in the fact that my son was getting on there nerves and in the way.

Don't complain make it hard for the staff and let them complain to there bosses maybe then they will sort it and see the folly of there actions.

Truly shocking parenting.

I would be ashamed to admit to this publicly.

markybrum

Paloma,

Could you add Germanwings to your family tax list. You need to buy a SMART (i.e. more expensive) fare to be able to choose your seat. If you buy a cheap seat, computer allocates your seats and none of the staff can change. However, staff and cabin crew are generally very helpful and so far they always asked other passengers to let us sit together.

Germanwings is Lufthansa by a different name, so it would be useful if they were included in articles about air-travel, such as how to reclaim Air Passenger Duty for under-12s. Still struggling with that one.

Thanks a lot

shaun_from_Africa

Pollycat wrote: »

Truly shocking parenting.

I would be ashamed to admit to this publicly.

I thought exactly the same.
joe1906 seems proud of the fact that he was happy to let his 3 year old son walk around the plane and possibly get hurt or traumatised.

Spike44

On a recent trip to Atlanta my wife and I were allocated seats rows apart. The select your seat 24 hours before was a joke, there were no pairs of seats available. I ended up paying an extra 80 pounds or so to seat in exit row seats.
Not all bad news though, on check in we were upgraded a cabin.
On the flight, I checked the exit row seats we had bought, they were occupied, BA have sold them again. We are mere pawns in the game and BA are clearly pulling a fast one with spreading passengers around the aircraft.

mathswizard

We have just flown Ryanair to Rhodes and back. The flight out was not full and some families had split seating. Other passengers quite happily swapped around to allow the children to be next to, or closer to, their parents. The cabin crew were really good in helping to facilitate this. The return flight was fuller and more problematic, but again, other passengers and the crew helped to re-arrange things. I would not be so quick to blame the airline as it is the check in people that allocate seating or refuse to be a bit more flexible when doing so. We had a major problem with Ryanair last year which caused us to miss our flights and I cannot fault them for sorting the problem out and ensuring we flew with no problems this year. Although the "family tax" may seem unfair, I would rather pay it (as we did) to ensure we were all seated together. There were five of us, including a small child and we were seating three in one row, two directly behind.

raxx

I'm with Joe1906. We had this with EasyJet last year - 2year old allocated seat on his own on flight from Turkey. To be fair, there is a certain camaraderie amongst passengers if you take it in your stride. The ladies seated either side of 2year old were only too happy to swap when they realised that the airline had appointed them as our babysitter for the journey! All you have to do is ask (swiftly followed by tips on how to entertain your child for the duration of the flight)

tomtontom

Spike44 wrote: »

On a recent trip to Atlanta my wife and I were allocated seats rows apart. The select your seat 24 hours before was a joke, there were no pairs of seats available. I ended up paying an extra 80 pounds or so to seat in exit row seats.
Not all bad news though, on check in we were upgraded a cabin.
On the flight, I checked the exit row seats we had bought, they were occupied, BA have sold them again. We are mere pawns in the game and BA are clearly pulling a fast one with spreading passengers around the aircraft.

They may have sold them again, they may have allocated the seats FOC as there must be someone sat there in case of emergency.

I fail to understand why you are moaning when you got upgraded. I guess some will find any reason (or indeed, no reason at all) to complain.

tomtontom

raxx wrote: »

I'm with Joe1906. We had this with EasyJet last year - 2year old allocated seat on his own on flight from Turkey. To be fair, there is a certain camaraderie amongst passengers if you take it in your stride. The ladies seated either side of 2year old were only too happy to swap when they realised that the airline had appointed them as our babysitter for the journey! All you have to do is ask (swiftly followed by tips on how to entertain your child for the duration of the flight)

So you're not with joe, who apparently left his child sat with strangers