Fizzer

You did read that it was a 3 year old separated from her accompanying parent? I think that far from helicopter parenting there would be complaints of child abandonment had the father elected to do this himself. If every other airline manages this how come it continues to be an issue for AC?

Stranger

Well, in effect the father did when he not not request seat assignments when booking.

If out of ignorance he might have an excuse.

If knowingly because he would not pay for seat assignments, surely he brought this upon himself, no?

This is all a consequence of the race to the bottom and unbundling. Web sites that look for absolute cheapest and people who will purchase based on ridiculous fare differences. With the result than if an airline does not unbundle it ends up losing.

Can we really blame the airlines?

eigenvector

I agree somewhat. But the airline KNOWS there is a child too young to be unaccompanied on the booking. So if they don't want to provide complimentary seating together for at least one parent with the infant child - fine. But they should assess a mandatory "accompanied child fee" on the booking and then ensure that the seats are assigned together. A parent might reasonably choose to have, say, a 12 year old sit by themselves to save the $15. That's fine. But a 3 year old needs to be seated with a parent.

Clearly, having a 3 year old sit by themselves is not acceptable. The airline should put a procedure in place such that this is not possible, regardless of the passenger's decisions. Whether the airline wants to charge for this service or not is up to them, but they should put in place a clear policy with automated enforcement at time of booking, not just push the problem onto GAs who end arguing with cheapo parents.

Diabeetus

Yes. This is a great idea. In theory, this shouldn't be hard to code into the wbesite.

canadiancow

While I absolutely agree with everything you're saying, how would the airline know the age?

When you book a domestic ticket, a birthdate is not required.

pitz

Lol, yeah, kids aren't 'independant' if they find sitting between a pair of straight-out-of-the-camps YMM-origin jackscrews who've had a few in the MLL and a few on the plane to be a bit frightening the first time they fly.

Really?

How much revenue is AC really leaving "on the table" by allowing people to select non-preferred seats free of charge anyways? I suspect the whole raison d'etre for the seat selection restriction on the cheap fares is simply to prevent the 'competition' from deducing true loads merely from seatmaps.

My "IT" solution would have bookers who identify as travelling with children calling a special 1-800 number with a code provided on the website, in which an agent assigns them proper seats on-the-spot. Could even be a PVR system with appropriate touch-tone responses for most routine situations. That way, the customers are happy, the robots can't trawl AC's seatmaps for load data, and at-airport concerns are eliminated.

Mauricio23

You are required to specify the number of children, and whether they are 0-2 (infant), 2-11 (child), or 12-15 (Youth). Good enough; anyone 11 and under sits with a parent, parental discretion applies for 12 and up.

Mauricio23

Now, if someone actually took the the time to read the article, they would have noticed the following bit:

So:

- The booking was made by the travel agent.
- The travel agent did not specify that one of the pax was a child.
- According to Air Canada, there is "automatic seat selection for families".

Assuming Air Canada is telling the truth, this is a non-issue, as there is apparently a system that keeps parents and children together. The blame lies with the travel agent who processed the child as an adult.

ffsim

Maybe we can, in part because they haven't done this:

Then again, maybe it's not the airline's fault

Still,

+1

yyccdg

So if booking on the AC website, and you have indicated you are flying with children can't a message like the following pop-up before completing:

"Your booking has indicated that you are flying with children and have not seat selected, the following will apply:

1. if you select and pay for seats, your party will be kept together
2. if you choose to continue without paying for seats, you will be able to select seats on check-in, but there are no guarantees.
3. if your child has to select a seat where they are by themselves, then the unaccompanied minor fee applies.

Please acknowledge your acceptance of these terms"

A couple of things would have to be in effect to help with this. If a seat selection is done, the airline must honor these with a minimum of one parent, one child in case of an aircraft switch. If the seat is assigned before check-in, then the algorithm needs to try to place a parent and child together (but they have been warned).

This message would allow the infrequent flier to be aware of what is happening and what could happen, allowing them to make a choice. If there is no pair of seats together, then it gets a little sticky. Possibly the answer may be they shouldn't be booking on that flight but obviously not all routes have multiple flights. The counter should be you should have booked earlier but then things do arise where you need to go now. Obviously we can't cover all situations.

The bigger issue for me though is how do you get all the on-line travel agencies to broadcast these messages before the ticket is booked. Most of them won't want to change their coding for one airline, especially if they ticket infrequently. I think more people are using online ticket agencies than the AC site.

Anyway, just a thought. (Putting on flame suit now and entering air raid shelter)

WR Cage

Take off the flame suit, take a bow, and pop the bubbly; cause you have won the internet today.

Online travel agencies and the GDS mainframe systems are the primary reason why these great ideas cannot be implemented at the global airline.

WR Cage

For WS, the revenue impact is about $50 million per annum. For AC the revenue impact is at least $250 million.

My AC estimate is largely around cop orations that willing chose Flex fare rather than tango. Main reasons for buying flex are reduced change fees and seat selection. Free seat selection for tango would put these corporate customers at risk for dropping fare to tango. Way back six years ago in the Brewer administration of AC, over half of AC pax were buying something more than just the basic lowest cost Tango airfare.

For Westjet, they are making millions off the seat selection for higher priced business routes, additionally the plus fare includes seat selection. Now if WS put free seat selection on their Flex fares, they would get millions in additional revenue from both more people buying up to flex and from Econo fare customer forced to buy seat selection in order to avoid the middle seat.

canadiancow

And how does that help the case of someone buying a ticket through a travel agent who doesn't tell AC there's a child?

You have to be 8 to use the UM service. What happens if they're younger?

ffsim

My +1 was specifically for this quote:

One of the "passenger's decisions" could very well be to buy tickets through a TA. Regardless, it's unacceptable for a 3-year old to be seated by himself / herself and Air Canada should have a procedure in place to prevent that from happening. Maybe they require a TA to identify children. Maybe they require birthdates. I have no clue, but airlines have been obligated to verify far more complicated things than whether or not a passenger is a child.

canadiancow

They do require the TA to identify children. The TA did not do this.

How can an airline get around a TA effectively lying to them?