It was shortly after that incident where a man was moved so as not to sit next to a young girl, a silly policy that was didn't survive very much media scrutiny, thankfully. The problem was that this family didn't care where they all sat, it turned out they were all very experienced travellers. The kid was clearly independently minded, and they allowed themselves to be scattered around the aircraft. Apparently they did ask at check-in if they could be moved nearer to each other, but the agent said she couldn't do it. So they gave up (I think they could have tried at the gate but I know they didn't).

The cabin crew were firmly of the view that this child should be sat next to at least one parent, but the layout of the aircraft made it very difficult due to other children and people with mobility issues.

They tried to swap an old lady behind me, but she spoke neither English nor Finnish, she burst into tears and started unnecessarily moving her overhead luggage in slightly alarming ways. The cabin crew member got verbally tackled for her handling of the matter, which was admittedly quite shoddy, and also got very upset, she was sent down the back of the plane and she wasn't seen again. The CSD then had a load of CE passengers kicking off about the lack of service. I was sat in the middle of all of this, and the kid continued to listen to heavy metal, completely oblivious to whatever benefit was being laid on for him.