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

holidaysforme

What a non story! Thought i'd wandered in to daily fail land for a minute:)

gettingtheresometime

prl100 wrote: »

I don't see why people traveling with children should get this service for free if I have to pay for it; I agree with Ryanair's position on this matter and I feel they inform customers quite well about this, nobody is forced to travel with Ryanair - they take the cheaper flight but don't want the cheaper service, you can't have it all!

I couldn't agree more.....if I've paid to on holiday with my OH then I'd expect to sit with him on the plane without having to pay for the privilege.

Why should ANYBODY who have booked together have to pay to sit together

michaels

Are there no safe gaurding issues here? Is it ok for an adult stranger with no crb check to be placed next to a child without the child's parents in close attendance? Certainly wouldn't be allowed in a school.

Plus I thought Ryanair was supposed to be the new cuddly 'we do customer services' Ryanair - I guess there is still a little way to go....

duchy

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

I couldn't agree more.....if I've paid to on holiday with my OH then I'd expect to sit with him on the plane without having to pay for the privilege.

Why should ANYBODY who have booked together have to pay to sit together

Possibly because not everybody is so needy that they have to be sat next to a partner for a short flight (Ryanair only fly short haul)

Ultimately most people fly Ryanair because they have cheap base fares and it is PAYG for everything over and above a bum on a seat. If you want to check luggage- you pay, if you want to eat on board rather than BYO- you pay , if you want guaranteed seats together- you pay.........or you could choose another airline who has a more inclusive service .

With airtravel there is always a choice.

MSE need to stop wasting resources on this non issue and focus on genuine social issues rather than first world "problems".

mgdavid

steve1500 wrote: »

This is what the people who advocate, pay if you want sit together, miss re the CAA guideline.

The lawyers would have an absolute field day. You can see the first question they would ask why did you ignore CAA guidelines.

did you not read post #19?

bowlhead99

Drav wrote: »

I find this incredibly frustrating. I like MSE and generally find its articles extremely informative and its great to have a company that appears to be fighting the consumers corner, but this is creating a mountain out of a mole hill.

Agreed!

I think Ryanair have some unfriendly policies, but I like their prices. If they didn't have these policies, they wouldn't have the prices. I don't think it at any point tries to hide its business model. If you hate the business model, fly with someone else. Or pay for allocated seating.

Exactly. With this company on the right dates you might get to fly a couple of thousand miles round trip for some nominal price, e.g. £20. That's a penny a mile. Your second family member can also get a seat on the plane for the same paltry cost, as can your third. But those prices don't get you an allocated seat.

You are aware that anyone can pay money to guarantee a specific seat. Therefore unless you also choose to guarantee your own specific seat then you must realise it is impossible to guarantee that there will be three seats remaining next to each other which you would be automatically put into, because two-thirds of the other customers, if they wanted to, may have chosen to pay £6 on top of the basic cost to guarantee themselves a window seat or an aisle seat, leaving only single middle seats available.

If you want to know that two of your party, or all three of you, are going to get to sit next to each other, you are welcome to buy two or three of the £6 seat reservation fees which are offered when booking.

Is this the company 'shamefully exploiting the fear factor'?? Of course not. You can pay some low price to fly your thousands of miles across continental Europe with a guaranteed seat OR you can shave £6 per person off the price by deciding not to take the guaranteed seat option and hope you get lucky.

For families who have needy 3-year olds who would probably spend the flight causing distress to themselves and the other passengers if they couldn't sit next to mummy, it matters more to them, whether they 'get lucky' or not.

So, families are a type of passenger group who are probably less likely to take that decision to save the £6 per head and NOT guarantee the seats - because they don't want to be allocated seats randomly according to what's left and which other groups didn't reserve seats but also hope to be sat together.

Does this mean that the £6 per journey per head saving opportunity which can't practically be accessed by some families - because they DO want a reservation service to make sure they sit together - is a "tax on families"? It's not a tax of any kind. It is simply a service that families do not want to be without. They can find any number of expensive airlines who bundle the service into a higher price. Or they can find cheaper airlines who itemise it separately alongside a lower price. Nobody is getting 'taxed'.

We declined and missed the holiday. Is this consumer friendly of Ryanair? Probably not. Can I complain? No, I knew what I was signing up for when I bought the ticket, I should have bought insurance or left earlier to get to the airport! That right there is accepting responsibility for my own decisions, bizarre concept I know.

If everyone had your common-sense and enlightened attitude, there would certainly be fewer articles in the media about consumers and consumer groups being outraged about how the whole world doesn't bend over backwards to offer them everything on a silver platter for nothing.

from the article:

We also wants to see airlines give clearer information about the seat selection policy, and we will be pushing the new Conservative policymakers, as well as the regulator, to take action.

Well if we are looking to whip people up into an indignant rage about things happening that they don't like ...

I am outraged by what I heard in the article. You are going to lobby the UK government to try to get them to take action and further interfere in what European companies like Ryanair offering services here are allowed to charge for the luxury of air travel and how they choose to structure their prices and what service they 'must' give to some types of customers regardless of price point ?? How dare you!

The CAA have guidelines already. You want to push a political party to direct its MPs to introduce laws and have a vote on this stuff? Do you realise how many other important matters there are for the MPs to debate instead, for economy or society at a given point in time? But you want to spend my ACTUAL taxes to impose a restructure of prices and service levels, to ensure that families don't feel they are paying a notional 'family tax' for the specific services that they need on a flight and I do not??

I am not a frequent user or particular fan of Ryanair. They get a lot of stick, however, they carry 80 million people a year. So despite the digs they always get for cost-cutting, presumably some people like what they are doing with their price and service - people might say they 'reluctantly' use them, but they do use them because they prefer not to pay more or fly at different times or fly to different places with different carriers.

The family in the article presumably did not need to specifically choose to fly to Portugal in May. Other holiday destinations and dates exist. Having chosen Portugal in May, they didn't need to choose Ryanair. Other airlines exist, as do boats and cars where you can sit together. Having chosen Ryanair they didn't need to choose 'unallocated seats'. Another option existed.

So, quite why MSE need to lobby my government to change the future holiday opportunities for the Parr family, is unclear. I pay enough in taxes already thanks, and do not really want them spent in enforcing changes which may also ultimately change the price of my own holidays.

saintscouple

The article states Ryanair charge from £5.99 or £8.99 per seat depending how it was booked. Well i booked a couple of return tickets only a couple of days ago and the cheapest is £10.99 per seat with the most expensive being £20 per seat! I would have been tempted at £5.99

REB75

Paying a premium to sit with your family is a cash cow for the airlines - however, if the airlines were at all sensible the could just charge adults travelling with adults who'd just like to sit together, as that would surely be a choice, not a necessity - For those travelling with children (as the pre-flight safety recording suggests) you are responsible for their safety. If the airlines want to sit minors away from their parents/guardians - they assume other passengers have agreed to take care of that child in the event of an emergency or even just during a turbulent flight! Where movement around the cabin is prohibited. This is far from acceptable. Surely placing children with those that are responsible for them on flights makes travelling by air a far better prospect for the child-free traveller, the cabin crew staff and the families, just not a premium. But until things change begrudgingly I'll have to pay the extra because I want my kids with me.

Algar

REB75 wrote: »

Paying a premium to sit with your family is a cash cow for the airlines - however, if the airlines were at all sensible the could just charge adults travelling with adults who'd just like to sit together, as that would surely be a choice, not a necessity - For those travelling with children (as the pre-flight safety recording suggests) you are responsible for their safety. If the airlines want to sit minors away from their parents/guardians - they assume other passengers have agreed to take care of that child in the event of an emergency or even just during a turbulent flight! Where movement around the cabin is prohibited. This is far from acceptable. Surely placing children with those that are responsible for them on flights makes travelling by air a far better prospect for the child-free traveller, the cabin crew staff and the families, just not a premium. But until things change begrudgingly I'll have to pay the extra because I want my kids with me.

The first SENSIBLE post on this thread.

Pollycat

benjus wrote: »

What a non-story. MSE is turning into the Daily Fail...

I agree.

Why does MSE insist in calling it a 'family tax'?

It's nothing of the sort.

It's a chargeable optional extra that anybody - whether they have children or not - can choose or not choose to pay.

At least they've toned it down a bit since starting this thread:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5228452

In that thread, they were 'demanding' now they are 'renewing calls'.