Is Paying Extra for Seat Choice a Safety Hazard?
Jackie Reddy March 28, 2019
little girl using tablet pc with parents at airport while waiting for their flight
Ryanair’s seating policy – which asks those passengers who wish to sit together to stump up an additional fee – is not only contentious but dangerous. Commenting to Which? Travel, the chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee said that Ryanair’s practices are putting profits before safety.
Contentious and controversial it may well be, but an investigation by Which? Travel suggests that Ryanair’s seating allocation policy could also be dangerous.
The low-cost carrier asks those passengers who wish to be seated together to pay an additional fee, but an investigation by the outlet found that this policy, “…could obstruct an evacuation as loved ones try to reach one another in an emergency.”
It looked at ten different carriers, all of which have a paid-for policy with respect to seating. However, eight of these airlines also said that it was part of their seating policy to place family groups together where feasible. Eight out of these ten carriers confirmed that this was part of their policy – except for Ryanair and Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air.
The outlet also looked at the experiences of 3,357 passengers with the former airline and it was noted that, “…Ryanair is the airline most likely to split passengers up.”
“Just 46 percent of Ryanair passengers who had not paid for a seat, were seated together. Compare that with 73 percent on Wizz Air, or 85 percent and higher for the other eight airlines analyzed,” it added. The complete results from the Which? Travel study can be viewed here.
Further analyzing these results, the outlet advised, “According to European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) rules, airlines must be able to evacuate the cabin in less than 90 seconds. Any longer, and the cabin environment can become lethal.”
Ryanair has said that it adheres to safety regulations and Wizz added that passenger safety is its top priority.
Offering his insight to the website, Dai Whittingham, the chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee, said, “In an emergency situation anyone will try to reach loved ones, even if it involves clambering over others, impeding the evacuation and putting lives at risk.”
Simply put, he described Ryanair’s policy as “putting its profits ahead of passenger safety.”
[Image Source: Shutterstock]
Incredible that these familie endanger all people onboard just to save a few bucks!
You get what you pay for. Simple as that, an age old story.
I’m not sure where I stand on this. On the one hand, I can see the logic behind offering basic economy and charging extra for ancillary services. The study by Which? doesn’t present any evidence that splitting up passengers traveling together tends to delay evacuation, just one person’s opinion that it could. On the other hand, most passengers really don’t care where they sit as long as they sit with their companions, and intentionally splitting up groups when assigning seats seems needlessly punitive, almost like extortion. Did this study just look at European airlines, or do the U.S. ULCCs not do this (since only Ryanair and Wizz were mentioned)?
Decoupling of fares is a product of consumer demand. If you want a ‘perceived’ cheap ticket, this is what happens, allocation comes at a cost. AA had to decouple its product as people perceived them as expensive. The growth of online comparison tools has spurred allot of people to compare flights with a short sighted view, only looking at price..
AFAIK, Basic Economy fares on US Airlines have the same policy!