Parents should never be charged to sit next to their toddler on a flight

Forcing a child as young as two to sit in their own row is impractical and unsafe – the rules need to be updated

I have never been a nervous flier, but on a recent flight from Los Angeles to Heathrow I felt an unfamiliar pang of anxiety as the seatbelt sign switched on before take-off.
I did not fear the turbulence over the Rockies predicted by the captain, nor the prospect of returning to the office riddled with jetlag. I was nervous because my son, George, had turned two while we were away. This meant he needed to be buckled into his own seat for take-off and landing, rather than sitting on one of our laps as he did on the outbound flight.
Luckily, we were flying with British Airways, which automatically allocates children aged two to 12 a seat beside at least one accompanying adult (as does Wizz). But this is not true for all airlines, some of which can only promise that you are seated an entire row away from your little one.
This has caused problems over the summer months. One flight attendant for a US airline said that she encounters seat-swapping scenarios in 80 per cent of her flights. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal she said she does not force passengers to move to accommodate families, but rather she reminds them: “OK, so you’re going to watch the toddler?”
Last summer, a chief executive went viral on TikTok when she refused to switch seats with a mother who wanted to sit next to her two children on a flight. Tammy Nelson, the head of a global jewellery brand, said she didn’t want to switch her window seat for a middle seat on a flight from Cincinnati, Ohio, to San Jose in California. In her post, Nelson said she had a big presentation coming up: “I desperately needed some sleep, so I did not agree to switch seats,” she wrote, sparking an online debate with more than 9,000 comments.
Jet2, Virgin, Tui and easyJet all have policies which effectively say they will do their best to seat children directly next to an accompanying adult, but that this cannot be guaranteed. Virgin says children must be within “arm’s reach” from an accompanying adult, while Tui says your child could end up “one row in front or behind, or across the aisle”. Jet2 will endeavour to accommodate families, but says it’s best to book a seat in advance to be sure, for a fee. Ryanair says it is “mandatory for an adult travelling with children under 12 to reserve a seat” (for a fee) and then your child will be allocated a neighbouring seat, free of charge.
All of these airlines are acting in accordance with the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) guidance on the matter. The UK’s aviation regulator says: “The seating of children close by their parents or guardians should be the aim of airline seat allocation procedures for family groups and large parties of children.”
The CAA advice continues: “Young children and infants who are accompanied by adults should ideally be seated in the same seat row as the adult. Where this is not possible, children should be separated by no more than one seat row from accompanying adults. This is because the speed of an emergency evacuation may be affected by adults trying to reach their children.”
I would hazard a guess that whoever decided airlines should “aim” to place children “close by” to an accompanying adult was not the parent of a two-year-old child with molars breaking through.
Here’s what a two-year-old can do. They can kick a football with surprising accuracy, they can say “tractor” quite eloquently, they can use a fork (very civilised), and they can spot cats from significant distances. But they can also be partial to a raging tantrum, defecate when they please, and cannot rationalise why they have been constrained next to two strangers while Mummy and Daddy reach their arms from in front and behind, like imps on a church fresco. 
This isn’t a matter of an entitled parent thinking they are more important than other passengers; it is a matter of safety, child protection and common sense. Seatbelts are not childproof and can be clicked open by a dextrous, unsupervised child at take-off or landing. The child protection charities I contacted declined to comment on this particular issue, but seating a child next to strangers – out of full sight of a parent – clearly isn’t best practice.
Justifying the guidelines, the CAA said that its “close by” policy is because, in some circumstances – for example, for bookings made at the last minute – it is not always possible to seat a child with an accompanying adult.
But it doesn’t seem right that these late booking hypotheticals, which presumably only occur rarely, should dictate this soft policy on parent-child seat allocations that has allowed some airlines to make a profit out of parents. If British Airways can seat a child next to their accompanying adult as part of the random seat allocation process, then surely all airlines can do the same?
Guy Hobbs, Which? travel expert, said: “Passengers often find the cost of their flight quickly spirals as they navigate through the booking process, with additional charges leaving them with an eye-watering final fare. For those travelling with children, being charged to sit together can seem particularly outrageous when practical and safety considerations mean paying the fee feels more or less obligatory. 
“Though the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act is addressing many ‘mandatory’ dripped prices like booking or transaction fees, it is clear further reform is needed to ensure greater transparency for passengers trying to compare the cost of flights once charges for things like luggage or seat selection are taken into account.”
The issue has been raised across the Atlantic by the Biden administration, which has clamped down on so-called “junk fees” in recent years to ensure businesses (not just airlines) disclose all fees up front, rather than introducing add-ons later in the booking process. 
Announcing plans in early August, Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, said: “The idea that parents ought to be seated next to their own children on a flight is common sense and also seems like something that ought to be standard practice.”
The White House rule will require airlines to seat children aged 13 and under next to their parents within 48 hours of booking: “If adjacent seats are not available, then the airline would need to provide you the option of a refund if you no longer want to take that flight,” a White House administration official said. These measures could be introduced as early as next year.
There’s precedent in India, too. In April this year, the directorate general of civil aviation issued a directive to all airlines saying: “Airlines shall ensure that children up to the age of 12 years are allocated seats with at least one of their parents/guardians who are travelling on the same PNR (passenger name record).”
In practice, I am sure that no flight attendant of a British airline would ever leave a distressed young child seated in a row of strangers before take-off. Seats would be swapped, everything would be fine. But this adds unnecessary stress to the time-sensitive boarding process.
It is unreasonable to place the burden upon parents and staff to make these arrangements onboard, unfair to guilt other passengers to give up the seat they might have paid for, and unacceptable that some airlines use this loophole to force parents into paying for this most basic of rights: to sit next to their child.