Ryanair Passive Aggressively Changes Family Seating Policy, Blasts Regulators

I’m surprised they “blasted” them, and not “slammed” them… (Ben, Buzzfeed wants its buzzwords back!)

I will never understand Ryanair. Any other airline would have launched a glossy ad campaign about how they're "looking out for families" (while glossing over the fact they've been forced to). It probably would have been successful in getting bookings. Should I love or hate their "refreshing" catty directness?

Although I’ve sworn to never fly Ryanair, I’m actually on their side on this one. The old policy seems pretty fair (and almost generous). If the adult pays for a seat in the front, up to 4 children get to be seated in the same row for free.

I, for one, do fly Ryanair occasionally and this is just stupid. It's like saying someone is generous because they stopped slapping you in the face.

A few years ago, Ryanair started actively breaking up group bookings and placing every member of the party in a different row. It wasn't even random, it was just coercion to make people pay to sit together. After massive backlash and regulatory threats, they then made this one accommodation for families where only adults had to pay. This was still worse than the old way of just seating people in sequnce.

All children should be in the very back.
Sounds good to me.

This is textbook, malicious compliance. The regulations are there for a reason, to protect consumers. Using this opportunity to change your policy like this undermine the reason we have these regulations to begin with, and it’s just wrong.

Welcome to the real world, where there are always unintended consequences when governments choose to force people and businesses to do something against their will. So yes, overregulation is just wrong.

Implementing the new policy doesn't require getting rid of the old policy. It's all about the money for Ryanair as we all know.

Ryanair - I might invest in it, but I'll never fly it.

It's just disgraceful to even think it's ok to separate a 3YR old from its parent. This is clearly a forced sale and pure greed from the airline. Clearly not acceptable. And you must not be a parent to think it's ok.

Anyway, I'm not surprised as Probably the only time I've sided with O'leary is when he says the airlines should be able to re-coup EU261 costs from airports and ATC service providers when they are responsible for delays.

I agree with you, governments should not have to rule that airline must seat their children with their parents, as airlines should apply some decency and not force this additional fees on families "because they can". Who would want their 3 Year old seated next to a stranger????

Mantis, this is sensible regulation. Quit cucking for corporate greed.

On the flip side Who would want to sit next to a random child ?

Ironically Emirates on several occasions have sat an unaccompanied child next to us and asked if we could ‘keep an eye on them. ‘

We have always politely declined and said quite firmly absolutely not our responsibility!

You decide to fly on a low end trash airline you should fully expected to be treated like trash. In turn for a dirt cheap ticket you agree not to be treated like a paying customer. It's that simple.

In 99% of the cases where some is being blasted by FR, they can be proud to have done the right thing! Certainly, MOL and FR are successful. But I usually find it quite disgusting how they achieve such success. Kudos to the regulators.

Just because one resides in “The Land of the free”, it doesn’t mean that everything has to be …. FREE …. you get what you pay for in this world unless you are illegal.

Conversely, it is disgraceful to even think that it is OK to deprive a person from sitting in the front of the cattle class cabin, who is actually willing to pay to do so. If the parents wish to pay for the privilege of sitting forward, why expect their issue not to do so too?

Conversely, why should Ryanair accommodate free loaders?

But that's not the opposite of the situation- Ryanair forced folks to pay for a seat if theyre a family. There was no 'i dont care where we sit, as long as we're together' option.
They dont need to let families select any seats for free, just agree that free assigned at checkin seats will be together.

I'm guessing with this update that 'random' assignments won't keep families altogether.

So if you have 2 adults in a group, it will split the adults up and assign children between them.

Or, wait for it, they could actually pay a small number of euros (on top of crazy low fares) and sit together. But, no, screw the rest of us, parents deserve free stuff we pay for.

As someone with no children who often flies alone, I absolutely believe children should be automatically put with their parents. I don't want to wind up next to a random 5 year old.

Crazy low fares? I just paid $450 for a one way 2h flight booked months in advance.

O,Leary is just a con artist always was and he won't change. Regulators need to be on his back every hour of every day and night.ake him miserable WELL,MORE MISERABLE THAN HE IS