Should Young Children Automatically Be Seated With Family?
Sarah Steegar April 19, 2016
Mother and her son have lunch on a flight
What sounds worse, sitting next to a stranger’s unaccompanied three-year-old in the middle seat for hours on a plane, or volunteering to trade your seat for a middle one to put the child with a related adult?
Flying can be uncomfortable enough without adding this last-minute dilemma to the stack of complaints, but it is put upon many passengers every day. I think we should do away with the problem altogether, which is why I’m a fan of an amendment to the FAA authorization bill that would require airlines to seat young children with a parent or approved guardian without extra fees.
Not everyone is cheering even the basic idea, however. I agree that I would like to see a couple of tweaks. Before I get to that, here’s why the move seems like a no-brainer.
1. It’s a safety issue.
This isn’t about “being nice” to a select group. In an emergency, where do you think families are going to be headed? To find and reach their children in the confusion – not get off the plane and out of the way first. We have 90 seconds to evacuate, people. If putting a seat back up one inch matters to the speed of getting people to safety, having people move in the same direction certainly does, too.
It is already a rule that families cannot be divided over an exit row. If you are flying with family who are ineligible to sit in the exit row, you are ineligible, too. (You may have seen this happen because we don’t always know who is together — and it is not procedure to ask exit row passengers to identify whom they are with.)
2. Most of the time agents or flight attendants have to sort this out anyway.
And in a much worse way – while trying to complete 100 other duties and meet passenger needs in the hectic 20-45 minutes we have to board an aircraft and make it ready for departure. It means adding last-minute stress to an already stressful time for the family, agents, flight attendants and passengers who will be pressured to move to accommodate a family. Sometimes that process fails altogether.
3. Although it’s very rare, there’s occasionally an accusation of inappropriate behavior by unknown seatmates.
Wouldn’t it be better for everyone, including airlines, to nix such concern altogether?
4. I fail to see it as a burden on anyone.
This was never an issue in the many decades before airlines decided to charge for it. It’s not like our systems don’t know how to automatically and smoothly put two people together in a reservation.
The Other Side
There are many who disagree with me and extensive debate can be found in the FlyerTalk forums (like this one). Even some flight attendants disagree, which was a shock to me. One such colleague was Megan, who is more concerned about “forcibly chang[ing] someone else’s seat that they chose and paid for to accommodate someone else.” One of my most dreaded boarding dramas is the last-minute pleas for flight attendants to play “passenger Tetris” on a full flight.
But I don’t see the bill as likely to create an unmanageable standard. Entire families don’t have to be together, just one guardian with a small child. They also don’t need particular seats, just a pair – any pair.
The concern for having to forcibly move passengers who should be guaranteed their seat is predicated on the idea that a large majority of passengers book prior to families with small children (which is nonsense) and will have paid extra for the guarantee of a specific selection. The last point assumes that so many passengers have pre-selected seats that there aren’t any two seat pairings remaining to accommodate a guardian and child. That’s a very high bar for me to believe as the norm.
Exceptions and extenuating circumstances happen, but the amendment does say “to the extent practicable.” Passengers already complain all the time that seat selections aren’t guaranteed. Seats are changed all the time for a variety of reasons (equipment downgrades, cancellations, or any number of reasons the airline doesn’t have to explain). I’m not saying this is great, but I’m saying they are unlikely to notice any difference.
I don’t like people who aren’t self-sufficient any more than you, but you can’t assume that a family who’s separated simply didn’t try. Just look at the steps a family is currently advised to follow in order to secure seats together. That seems to be an excessive burden. I’m not in favor of bowing to families just because they’re families, but a fee to put them together isn’t charging extra for convenience — it’s charging for a safety issue. And that’s wrong.
[Photo: Getty]
Surprisingly, never had a major issue when traveling with my little ones. Mostly, managed to get at least one adult with the two rugrats. On rare occasions (computer glitches which lost the assignments, IRROPs), we had to "sort it out" once on board. And the vast majority of times, people were understanding and wiling to adjust. Recall once (flight cancelled, rebooked on another) where 4 of us were assigned middle seats scattered through the plane. One couple shifted, allowing wife and one kid to be together. No one in the other area was willing. I just reminded junior (7 yrs old at that time) to "avoid spilling OJ on the people next to him. By the way, puke INTO the air sickness bag this time. And, have that bag out, just in case..." The lady in the window seat was suddenly "motivated" to switch seats with me! Once under way, I bought her a drink as a Thank You. One last thing. When there were inadvertent seat changes, I found SQ, BR and CO (RIP) to be pro-active in trying to get seating rearranged. BA, AF and DL were the least cooperative.
Laws are created when people can't use common sense / are greedy / are too selfish/ too self-righteous to behave properly. The whole act of commercial flying is a social event. There are many compromises people have to make, especially when flying economy. Bad food, bad passengers and generally a bad experience. For a greedy airline to split families up beggers belief. For others to think this is ok just shows the character of those people. If you don't like families - then fly with an 'adult only' airline. Oh wait - there aren't any. I wonder why? Perfect reason for CAA to make a change. The FAA already has.
A few points, being Australian, most flights I take cost in the realm of multiple thousands of dollars for International long haul, the closest destinations I fly to are at least 8-9 hours away. Considering the effort taken to accrue status with a single airline and the cost paid for seat selection in the past the chances of me trading for an inferior seat for any reason is practically zero. Sarah I read your article on BluntMoms. I agree that the situation was suboptimal but a few things here make me bristle. "At that point, the man in the aisle seat moved to the middle seat (next to his WIFE) rather than have me sitting between them. I thanked him profusely as that would make it a bit easier to attend to my son in the row ahead of me. But he didn’t even reply. I’m guessing that he wasn’t very happy about sitting in the middle seat for the next 90 minutes. Seriously? What a dick." Errr...What? Someone sat middle for aisle and they get called a d***? Really now? "P.S. Our plane arrived early at its destination (fuck you, dick flight attendant)." If what was said was true, the FA probably wasn't being particularly nice. It's a moot point though, whether the flight arrives early or not really isn't under the control of that particular flight attendant. My 2c. Children should NEVER be sat alone and unattended. Unaccompanied minors is just a bad idea IMO. Passengers who have paid for seat selection should never be compelled to swap and in the case of equipment swaps whoever gets bumped should just bite the bullet solo or family. If sitting together presents a problem the solution is not to fly or be reaccomodated on the next flight.
These examples would all not be compelling enough for me to surrender a superior seat . Forcing the issues families have created for themselves onto other passengers by the weapon of the law is entirely disproportional, as the vast majority of all cases can be prevent and resolved by careful planning. Book longer layovers if you fear misconnects, miss another flight if the next one is too full. I'd rather give parents the option to opt out from a specific flight than being awarded the privilege of booting other passengers who planned more carefully.
Should young children automatically be seated with family? Yes. Obviously. How is this even a question? Seriously, Americans!