Ryanair to charge parents to sit with children
From September Ryanair will make it mandatory for adults travelling with children under-12 to purchase a reserved seat, but those children under-12 will receive free of charge reserved seats.
Ryanair is introducing this initiative after a busy summer when most of its flights were full.
As a result many adults travelling with young children did not select reserved seats and accordingly were randomly allocated seats that were not together (due to the large number of Ryanair customers who are already reserving their preferred seats).
This caused boarding issues as crews tried to re-seat customers with young children.
Ryanair argues its crews cannot move customers who have already paid for their preferred seats simply to accommodate other customers who are travelling with young children, who declined to reserve their seats and chose to have their seats randomly allocated.
Ryanair chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, said: “This will prevent other customers who have chosen to purchase a seat of their own from being displaced on-board.”
Ryanair added in a statement that only one adult has to purchase a seat.