This one is wild. You want to sit next to somebody's crying 2 year old? Go nuts. Change their diaper while you're at it.
My spouse and I just finished our first two flights with our 11 month old this weekend which were about 3.5 and 4 hours apiece. Even with an extra seat reserved for them and an overall extremely well tempered baby, I cannot imagine how much harder the flight would have been if the gate agent hadn't been able to rearrange our seats so all three of us were sitting together. If that hadn't been guaranteed, we would have had to ask one of the neighbors to swap seats with us. They'd have been highly motivated to do so, but it wouldn't have been a sure thing. They may have their own needs. Impromptu swaps during boarding seems not great for making the process go smoothly.
Having to get an extra seat to fit a car seat for an infant isn't required, but flying with the infant in a car seat is strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Having somewhere to put the baby or their various toys/bottles temporarily helps a whole lot over a four hour flight. This already added $500 onto the price of our trip.
The cost of raising children is already very high in the US, so it will really suck if flying becomes yet more expensive and stressful. In my opinion, this (and many others) are a cost which we should spread out if we actually want people to have kids.
I get the idea of paying for the privilege, but at the same time, it's not like they roll out the red carpet for someone who flies with their kids. Pretty much every time that I can remember them ever rearranging seats to get us together, we always wind up sitting in the rows at the very back of the plane close to the bathroom, which is fine with me. If I wanted red carpet treatment, I'd pay for first class for everyone. But I'm not about to do that.
All I do know is that if they were to stop rearranging seats, it would make the frequency of our flying go down quite a bit. At a minimum, if they went that route, I would want there to be a guaranteed payment to be able to get everyone to sit together. That way I can at least plan for the extra cost. Knowing airlines they would probably use a sliding scale based on age or something.
Air travel is a solved problem and there's no innovation really to be done; the planes are packed like cans of sardines most of the time, the food is awful, and the travel itself is expensive, cumbersome, and a miserable experience overall but they are STILL trying to find ways to juice revenue, up to and including separating children from parents and charging them to be put back together.
What they're gonna get is same thing that happened when luggage fees became standard: enshittification because people find ways to pay less. In the case of luggage fees, suddenly everyone's like "yeah, okay, I guess I can fit things into a carry on" and turns out there's not enough overhead space for the entire plane so the plebs in Group 4+ have mandatory gate checks. Is the labor of always gate checking bags really any cheaper than having it flow through the airport luggage infrastructure? Apparently it is slightly, but it's definitely a shittier experience.
What's gonna happen here is parent is gonna book two separate cheap middle seats and ask you when you sit down if you could trade your premium aisle/window seat for a middle seat so mom and child can be together. Because otherwise you're separating momma from baby and therefore a terrible human.
And then we all get upset at each other for trying to cost-hack instead of seeing the real enemy in the room: the pathological MBA's picking up pennies in front of the enshittification steamroller.
Selling tickets to a small child and their caregiver and then seating them far apart is plainly not fit for purpose. They can't actually fly like that, so you've sold them something they can't use, and that you know they can't use.
If they want to charge extra to sit together, fine, but that needs to be bundled into the basic price when one of the tickets is for a small child, not presented as an optional add-on at an additional cost.
If you and your partner board the plane, sit separately, and one of you sits next to me that's not a negative for me. You'll sit, you'll watch a movie, read a book, whatever. You're self-contained.
If you and your five year old child board the plane, sit separately, and your child sits next to me that's a clear negative for me. Your child needs attention and assistance. It's bad for you, it's bad for the child, it's bad for me. Probably also bad for whoever sits next to the parent because they’ll be standing up and sitting down constantly to go and attend to their child.
I get that it isn't "fair" in a very straightforward examination of the scenario but take a step back and it's just making every passenger's experience more miserable in an attempt to gain more airline profits. If it happens just watch, the airlines will introduce a "guarantee not sat next to a solo child" add-on fee for you to pay.
We traveled so my only remaining grandparent could meet her great granddaughter before she dies, which could be any day now. Do you think we should make doing that harder just for slightly higher profits?
The kid will get over it, and the misery of the rest of the people on the flight isn’t my problem. The stewardess can deal with it and nobody gets their peanuts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
Oh great so now I have to sit next to someone’s unattended child in the name of fairness? Am I gonna get the option to subsidise the family’s seat grouping instead of being saddled with that noise? Talk about creating problems for no good reason.
Currently, it's just the case that parents get a discount on the seat reservation fee.
I was in one of these situations once where we missed a scheduled flight because of an airline screwup, and they refused to accommodate us without a substantial payment - thousands of dollars. Frankly, I couldn’t afford it. This despite the fact I already paid for an assigned seat on the fubar flight.
The predictable outcome happened after they pulled away from the gate and the flight crew came to me and my response was “He’s 20 rows away, what do you expect me to do? Sounds like the options are to move us, or return to the gate.”
They figured it out and were great about it, but the whole situation was stressful to everyone and was completely unnecessary. Flight crews are busy and it’s just senseless toil.
On the other hand, I never understood this obsession with grown people acting like it’s the end of the world if they don’t sit together. My wife and I fly a lot together - over a dozen trips this year - and she flies more frequently by herself. We both prefer window seats. We hardly ever sit together unless we can get 2 seats next to us by ourselves like on larger planes with a 3-2-3 combination or exit row seats in main.
Also see, I’m not going to work extra hours because a parent can’t work late. Just because I have grown children doesn’t mean that I don’t have a life outside of work.
i.e. when my child was young, a waiter could hand them a lemonade and they'd be ecstatic. If I handed them the same lemonade, they would start screaming at me the color of cup was wrong.
You know this is going to happen too: there are going to be some subset of parents that are not going to pay extra and will just choose to let the airline make their kids some complete stranger's problem. Hope the general public enjoys it.
Or when it comes time to tax the shit out of the grown kid made possible by the massive time and money investment made by the parents, the lion's share of the total. "No no no, that was society's investment -- now they owe us those taxes as part the social contract!"
When it comes time to do the gangster shit it's all on the parent, but when it comes time to reap the benefits suddenly "we're a society."
With the current implementation exposed to the end customer, yes, that's required. Reserving specific seats isn't fundamental to the constraint that some people want to sit together.
Plus, the current reservation system is predatory in its own right. When booking you're dumped into a page strongly suggesting you must choose a seat, and all available options cost more than the base ticket.
I basically only fly with a kid because everyone else is willing to subsidize the massive externality I impose on them.
"I don't mind paying more money in taxes" they always say, knowing full well that the majority of the incidence is on the next generation.
I didn't do these things for economic reasons growing up, and I'm perfectly fine today
It's an additional expense which isn't a luxury for parents. You can't sit far from an infant for 6+ hours because they need close attention. Also, sometimes there aren't adjacent seats for you to choose. Nevertheless, gate agents are usually able to somehow make things work. I'm not sure how they do this on a packed flight though. I didn't notice anyone being called over the PA after a gate agent moved all three of our seats to a different row on our last packed flight.
I don't understand this. When you book a flight, do you not chose your seats so you sit together? Why should it be up to the airline to ensure you get a seat with your baby, that is part of planning a trip.
When I rent "the cheapest car on offer", if it is a 2 seater, and I have 3 passengers, that's on me for not planning for my passengers.
People who chose to not pick their seats (to save the $25 or whatever) shouldn't then punish people like me who paid to sit in a specific seat with specific neighbors.
But I paid for my seat and if I did pay to sit next to my wife (which isn’t really a big deal for either of us), I would be really pissed if my seat was changed because a parent was too cheap to pay to have an assigned seat.
My wife and I have chosen a different flight because the seats we wanted wasn’t available.
Of course all of these opinions of mine go out of the window if it truly is an emergency. But even then, at least with Delta, they only allocate a certain number of seats as “basic economy” and once those are sold out - like they might be on a last minute flight - you have to pay a fare where you choose your seat.
And if you expect me to defend the police or Karyns about anything, let’s just say I grew up on NWA and “F%%% the police” and my mom constantly told me that don’t think because my White friends could get away with minor criminal mischief that I could.
Well actually she said “don’t let your little white friends get you in trouble”. But close enough.
You appear to have since edited your comment, but the version I replied to referred to being able to choose a seat as the luxury, not flying itself. As I've said elsewhere, flying is either a straight up necessity in some cases and a practical one in others. As I've also said in other places, people without kids can fly without need of choosing their seats.
> But I paid for my seat and if I did pay to sit next to my wife (which isn’t really a big deal for either of us), I would be really pissed if my seat was changed because a parent was too cheap to pay to have an assigned seat.
You can debate on whether or not flying is a necessity, but if we're flying then it's a luxury for you to sit next to your wife but it's a necessity for me to sit next to my infant.
You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.
If you're talking about a private company choosing who to subsidize once government regulations are removed, then I don't see how you have room to complain. It's not like taxes. You can charter a flight or rent a cessna to pilot if you don't agree to the private terms of carriage of anyone offering tickets.
Taxes are way worse because a guy with a gun can show up and put anyone who disagrees with the majority's idea of charity or subsidy into a tiny cage; if you disagree you can't even escape it by leaving the country because the USA has worldwide taxation. I would classify private flight subsidization as a much more ethical, moral, and wildly less violent regime than taxing people for the healthcare of others.
“When an airplane crashes, the safety belt…may become a deadly hazard.”
- Scientific American Dec 1951 “The Dangerous Safety Belt”
"Aviation requirements for basic safety features, including passenger safety belts, were codified in 1972"
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-airlin...
Then, people with that flexibility could offer that flexibility to the airline in exchange for a cheaper ticket that meets their needs and people who don’t have the same level of flexibility could buy tickets that reflect their needs.
I say this as a parent who pays for assigned seats because we choose to buy tickets that reflect our actual level of flexibility.
Society has to treat parents differently because children are necessary for society to continue. If you make being a parent sufficiently burdensome, people will choose not to have them.
> I say this as a parent who pays for assigned seats because we choose to buy tickets that reflect our actual level of flexibility.
For what it's worth, I'm saying all this as a parent who flies on airlines where assigned seats are the only option afaik
Their flexibility is lubricating the entire system and making it work better. Why should we charge them the same amount as people who aren’t as flexible?
What I see is people who aren’t offering that flexibility arguing that they should still get the price as if they were willing to provide it, when they are consuming rather than providing it.
You don’t _want_ a sleep deprived new parent on-call. A sleep deprived person is not who you want responding to an emergency, so of course others should pick up the slack temporarily. That’s what being a TEAM is all about. Kind of like playing a sport?
Now if the team is tiny the on-call impact will be a much bigger deal, and i sympathize, but in that case i’d blame management for having poor redundancy / contingency plans, NOT my colleague.
And for some reason there’s always some snarky person who chimes in with a comment like “but they chose to become parents!” A tale as old as time… so did our own parents! They chose. But i’m a human being that has empathy and i’m grateful to those who helped pick up the slack during their stressful newborn phase.
From the little I do fly other airlines, only the cheapest fares don’t at least give you credits for cancelled flights.
Every airline has a credit card that gives you free luggage where the annual fee is cheaper than the baggage fee for a couple flying round trip.
My wife and I also have status with Delta (Platinum Medallion), lounge access, TSA PreCheck, Clear etc so we can do our best to not deal with families and once a year vacationers. We live in Orlando now.
But if I did have small kids. I would definitely pay for reserve seatings.
Let me know if this is an unfair summarization, but the way I see it: my comments discussed how charging parents additional fees to sit near their infants is bad. Your comment proposed charging people who wanted assigned seating for that feature and allowing people who don't need that flexibility a discount. How does that address my point rather than simply re-describe the thing I've already described as the problem?
> Why should we charge them the same amount as people who aren’t as flexible?
Because that flexibility is needed more by parents and we generally want to encourage parenting and reduce the burden on them by using the power of the state to spread such costs out. IMO we don't do nearly enough of this, like with family leave, daycare, or healthcare costs.
That difference matters quite a bit if you're specifically arguing about how people who are going to fly get to experience said flight.
[Edit] If you don't believe that parents have as much reason to fly as anyone else I don't think there's much point to further discussion. However if you do believe it then whether or not assigned seating specifically counts as a luxury matters quite a bit.
> You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.
Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids? That's a very good way to make having kids prohibitively expensive and part of how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'm in my late 30s and most of my friends chose not to have kids. For quite a few of those friends, they decided not to have them specifically because of how expensive it's become. You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.
If the standard is everyone can choose whom they sit next to (assuming seats are available), then parents are at no disadvantage. This is how air travel was for a very long time, when tickets were much more expensive and much more all-inclusive.
Now, people are seeking cheaper tickets, so the airlines propose to offer discounts for passengers to forgo some of that all-inclusive nature and if those forgone items are a good match for your needs, feel free to take advantage of them. If they're not, feel free to buy a ticket that meets your needs.
No one would think that when the USPS offers Next Day Express, Priority, and Parcel Post that a parent should get Next Day Express for the price of Priority or Parcel Post just because they're mailing something for their kid, right? When a rental car company charges a family of 6 more for a large car than a childless couple is charged for an economy car, are they violating some kind of social contract? "Use discount code BUTIHAVEFOURKIDS to rent a Suburban for the price of a Civic." A landlord charging more for a 2 BR than a 1 BR also hurts parents, but I assume most people think that's logical and proper.
> we generally want to encourage parenting and reduce the burden on them by using the power of the state to spread such costs out
Some people want that. Not all people want that and probably no one wants it in unlimited amounts. I have kids and I'm largely indifferent on the topic beyond supporting strong K-12 public education. I do observe that some people take the notion of "we should spread out the costs of kids" way, way too far for what I think is rational.
Selfishly, I'd be perfectly fine if Basic airline tickets were made illegal for everyone. It just makes my looking at airfares online more annoying because I'll never buy a Basic fare. But, people who do find Basic fares to meet their needs ought to be allowed to have access to them, so I don't actually want them banned.
> Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids?
So i now live 10 miles away from DisneyWorld, should my ticket prices also be more so your kids can get in free when we only have to pay for two adults? We were also able to downsize to a 1200 foot condo from a 3100 square foot house, we can spend our money on vacations instead of travel hockey like my friend.
What next? Should airlines have “kids fly free”?
> You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.
I’m all for both low skill and high skill immigrants coming in where there is actually a shortage.
But play me the smallest fiddle because you don’t think you should have to pay for a ticket to reserve your seat requiring other people to move. See also, if you are too big to fit in one seat without encroaching on my space, you should also have to buy two seats - a policy many of the airlines have.
Well, no, it’s on all of you in the sense that all of your passengers pay the price for your mistake. But as the guy behind you in line at the rental place, makes no difference to me.
If a parent isn’t sat with a child everyone sat anywhere near the kid pays a price.
What I'm saying is, if you do it this way, you're now leaving the decision up to the parents. And some parents will choose not to pay. When that happens – because it will happen – I don't want to hear people complaining about having to sit next to other people's kids. Everyone was treated equally, a choice was given, a choice was made.
The other option is, we say as a society that here is a situation nobody wants, we all see that, so we're all going to collectively agree to set things up in the parents' favor a little bit, thus doing something nice, creating an outcome that is better for everyone, but at the cost that some parent seating gets subsidised by others on the plane.
Just laying out the options. Classic individualist thinking will say, I don't want the government to decide for me that I should subsidize. And thus some people will end up sitting next to somebody's crying 2 year old.
Again, I (who paid for a selected seat assignment) should not even be asked by anyone (staff or passengers) to get up because they didn't pay for a seat with their baby.
I just disagree that a child's seat should be allowed to be picked at random by the airline, forcing people to move who DID pick their seat. If an adult is booking a flight with a child, they should be required to book the child+parent seat even if that costs extra.
I believe all seats SHOULD be picked by passengers at the time of purchase, full stop. That was the way it had been as long as I had been flying, until they realized they could make more money by charging "seat selection" fees, now you have people who are the last to board because they got the cheapest seats who complain they aren't sitting with their travel partner. Which shouldn't be the problem of the airline or the passengers that picked their seat.
Sometimes we're so focused on the concept of "fair" that we lose sight of the bigger picture.