Someone is going to have a fun easy jet flight next week.

WezV

RandallFlagg said:

I have been on several Easyjet flights where the attendants have moved passengers around to allow children and adults to be seated together.

As a parent I see it as my responsibility to ensure the welfare of my children and when presented with a option to choose seats for a small fee during the booking process I take it.

I see the point, but don’t agree.  It’s an easy thing to say with hindsight 

The OP had entered the passenger details including the age of the children.

The airline had the info it needed to make an appropriate seating decision. The OP incorrectly assumed this would inform seating location.


The OP realised their mistake and tried to correct it.  The airline refused to help.

Teetonetal

RandallFlagg said:

I have been on several Easyjet flights where the attendants have moved passengers around to allow children and adults to be seated together.

As a parent I see it as my responsibility to ensure the welfare of my children and when presented with a option to choose seats for a small fee during the booking process I take it.

RandallFlagg said:

Easyjet's seating policy:

You can choose where you’d like to sit for a small fee. Seats can be chosen when you book or later via the easyJet app or through Manage Bookings.

It's your choice, if you wanted to ensure your daughter sat with you then you could have paid a small fee to ensure that. 

yes, but having not flown easyjet for about 15 years, I didn't realize they have a different prcoess. With every other airline I've flown on, they show you the auto selected seats and then ask if you'd like to pay to move. It didn't occur to me that if you don't choose to pay seats upfront, before checking in, that they just skip straight to the boarding card and that's when you find your seats. In the check in process I was not shown a seating plan. It just seems odd and actually seems like they are missing a last chance to get people to pay extra. If I'd been shown the seats, I would certainly have paid more to get us together.

I'm not blaming Easyjet it's my mistake - I should have paid more attention to the booking process, but as a regular flyer (50 flights a year) you get used to how most companies do it and Easyjet's process is different.

However, I am actually quite surprised that children under 8 or so are legally allowed to be seated away from a parent. It's a bad situation all round for the airline staff, the child, the parent and especially other passengers who either get asked to move or end up sitting next to an inconsolably sobbing child, or worse a damned naughty one.

Given you have to declare the ages of children it's a very simple software problem to solve to get at least one parent and a child together. All it shows is that in setting up the seating booking flow in such away that this is actually likely to happen unless you pay, the airlines have only one aim, which is to make as much money from a passenger as possible, even if it causes child distress. I see that in the USA they have now made this illegal. Generally you know something is wrong when even the USA recognizes it as a poor practice!

https://familytravel.org/congress-passes-law-families-flying-together/

Moe_Zambeek

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/airline-seating

Neil

I wouldn't give any of those awful cheapskate airlines one penny of my money. 

Want to sit next to your children? Pay more money - what?

quarky

I booked a flight for summer with Wizzair (who are normally not too bad), and they won't even guarantee that you can take your hand luggage on board. You need to pay extra if you don't want the chance that your hand luggage it is taken from your at the gate and put into the hold. 

This kind of shit is why I hate flying. Nothing to do with being up in the air, just BS that makes even rail travel look pleasant.

Teetonetal

So this is Easyjet's official customer service response.

It's unfortunate that the flight is very full and that we have not been sat together, it's not ideal but we had the choice to pay for seats and didn't.

Fair enough, but when asked if we could now pay to move to the front seats as we have obviously made an error, they said no, as the seats we are leaving will be harder to sell as they are single seats, the remaining seats will be easier to sell as they are together. The airline crew will try to move us on the day of the flight.

So there you go. Easyjet's seating algorithm is designed to maximize seat sale, not look after customers who have already paid.

chillidoggy

So it's just about seat allocation, then?

That's a relief, I thought Emp had got a pilot's licence when I read the thread title.

not_the_dj

Teetonetal said:

So there you go. Easyjet's seating algorithm is designed to maximize seat sale, not look after customers who have already paid.

Not a surprise really. 

I’m sure common sense will prevaail and they’ll be people willing to move on the actual day. 

ICBM

Moe_Zambeek said:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/airline-seating

It does look like Ryanair are the real problem - it's clearly deliberate with them, not accidental.

Although it has to be said that splitting a hen party going to Ibiza into 15 separate rows might be considered a sensible precaution to minimise the possibility of trouble on the flight...

exocet

quarky said:

I booked a flight for summer with Wizzair (who are normally not too bad), and they won't even guarantee that you can take your hand luggage on board. You need to pay extra if you don't want the chance that your hand luggage it is taken from your at the gate and put into the hold. 

This kind of shit is why I hate flying. Nothing to do with being up in the air, just BS that makes even rail travel look pleasant.

Ryanair do this as standard now. I fell foul of it recently when my brother booked a flight for both of us. He did warn me but I thought that he meant that he hadn't booked hold luggage. I rocked up at Stansted (WTF have they done to Stanstead - won't be using that again).  Zero Ryanair presence before security so couldn't rectify my mistake, carried my cabin bag to the gate..in fact walked it to the plane where it was taken and put in the hold. Trouble is, I usually put my passport and wallet in my cabin bag. Rock up at Copenhagen airport...1st thing you encounter is passport control.....where's my cabin bag (passport) ???? Anyway, by luck, this time I'd put passport in jacket pocket. 

Neil

quarky said:

I booked a flight for summer with Wizzair (who are normally not too bad), and they won't even guarantee that you can take your hand luggage on board. You need to pay extra if you don't want the chance that your hand luggage it is taken from your at the gate and put into the hold. 

This kind of shit is why I hate flying. Nothing to do with being up in the air, just BS that makes even rail travel look pleasant.

Not a problem if you use normal airlines.

These "budget" airlines are just a complete joke.

Can't guarantee you can take hand baggage on board??? Unless of course you pay extra. 

They just hold you to ransom. 

Dominic

skunkwerx said:

I wonder if humanity will kick in and one of the other seats offer to switch when you’re there.

That is what eventually happened but nobody was prepared to move no matter how much we asked.....Cabin crew didn't want to know
Finally one decent chap offered to move but probably because they couldn't handle the crying any longer
It made us all very fractious -not nice for a parent to hear your 7 year old distressed

JAYJO

When they let you through with the speedy boarders because you have a young child (even though the speedy boarders have paid extra). just sit together and see whos willing to split you up.

Wolfetone

Teetonetal said:

Haven't flown with easy jet for years... didn't occur to us to check in more than 24hrs before the flight.

Just randomly checked online for next weeks flight and they auto allocated us seats that are not together... some poor bastard is going to be sitting next to my 4 year old girl (who hates flying) whilst I relax 2 rows back.

Rang them up and they won't swap our seats, even though I offered to pay the charge to get the expensive seats that I can see are still free. 

Happy days. Going to tell my daughter to scream as loud as she can I think.

You've been misinformed. You can go online and change any aspect of your booking up to about four hours before providing that they have the capacity. 

I fly around the world on many airlines and not one of them has ever refused a late request for either extra baggage or a seat change.

LuttiS

Teetonetal said:

Happy days. Going to tell my daughter to scream as loud as she can I think.

Give her a pack of runny yogurts. Guaranteed splatter, see who still wants to sit there. 

On a more serious note, i read the thread at 4.30am this morning with my 22mo screaming in my face (teething).. it really upset me thinking about it (or it may have been that my she had me up at 4.30am and was screaming in my face)!
Hope it all works out ok for you.

Teetonetal

Wolfetone said:

Teetonetal said:

Haven't flown with easy jet for years... didn't occur to us to check in more than 24hrs before the flight.

Just randomly checked online for next weeks flight and they auto allocated us seats that are not together... some poor bastard is going to be sitting next to my 4 year old girl (who hates flying) whilst I relax 2 rows back.

Rang them up and they won't swap our seats, even though I offered to pay the charge to get the expensive seats that I can see are still free. 

Happy days. Going to tell my daughter to scream as loud as she can I think.

You've been misinformed. You can go online and change any aspect of your booking up to about four hours before providing that they have the capacity. 

I fly around the world on many airlines and not one of them has ever refused a late request for either extra baggage or a seat change.

No you can't.

It states clearly on the website that once checked in, seats cannot be altered. Customer Service also won't help. Also, the change seats box is grayed out.

Teetonetal

LuttiS said:

Teetonetal said:

Happy days. Going to tell my daughter to scream as loud as she can I think.

Give her a pack of runny yogurts. Guaranteed splatter, see who still wants to sit there. 

On a more serious note, i read the thread at 4.30am this morning with my 22mo screaming in my face (teething).. it really upset me thinking about it (or it may have been that my she had me up at 4.30am and was screaming in my face)!
Hope it all works out ok for you.

Was also thinking of making a big deal about pointing out to her where the sick bag is, think I'll also then give her neighbor a big pack of wet wipes and exclaim, "especially after last time"... etc.

JezWynd

Neil said:

They just hold you to ransom. 

Neat summation of their business practice.

This is all about having a headline low flight cost figure - from then on it's all about trying to claw every extra penny out of the customer's pocket.

It's like those banks who advertise astonishing interest rates for savers only to reveal you can only invest a max of 100 pcm for a year. How did we end up in this mess of deceit? Advertising, that's how.

Wolfetone

Teetonetal said:

Wolfetone said:

Teetonetal said:

Haven't flown with easy jet for years... didn't occur to us to check in more than 24hrs before the flight.

Just randomly checked online for next weeks flight and they auto allocated us seats that are not together... some poor bastard is going to be sitting next to my 4 year old girl (who hates flying) whilst I relax 2 rows back.

Rang them up and they won't swap our seats, even though I offered to pay the charge to get the expensive seats that I can see are still free. 

Happy days. Going to tell my daughter to scream as loud as she can I think.

You've been misinformed. You can go online and change any aspect of your booking up to about four hours before providing that they have the capacity. 

I fly around the world on many airlines and not one of them has ever refused a late request for either extra baggage or a seat change.

No you can't.

It states clearly on the website that once checked in, seats cannot be altered. Customer Service also won't help. Also, the change seats box is grayed out.

Ah, you checked in. OK, I understand now.

JezWynd

How apt. (crap video alert)