Wow, are Mumsnet users really this understanding and empathetic? I mean, my response would be, "did you buy the seats together? No? So what's there to complain? Your lack of foresight is not anyone's problem."

YTA. who books a family flight and doesn't pay to sit together? This is entirely on the OP not Ryanair or their staff.

I will always, but always offer up my seat if there if a child has been separated from their parents/care givers. Yes, there are times when people haven't booked seat numbers due to money, but it's not the only reason. - - - - I'm going to go as far as saying I think it should be illegal for children under 12 to be seated separately from their parents/care givers.

We went through this with our 4 children this summer in the aftermath of the Internet outage in July. We ended up spending three extra days in San Francisco until we were able to sit next to each other. If we had flown out sooner, all of us were split up all over the place for 7 hours. With crazy unpredictable behavior from other passengers my husband and I Held the airline to their policy

You have to pay extra to pick your seats, this is common knowledge. If you are this worried about sitting together than pay the extra.

It's RYANAIR, one of, if not the worst, airline in Europe/the world for the past 15yrs, and you expect to be treated like British Airways clients? Ryanair are famously a 'free for all' when you board the plane, staff don't care about seat assignments because they're paid so badly. Ryanair owner famously doesn't care about peoples safety or fair treatment, all he cares about are profits and has admitted it on TV. You get what you pay for, next time pay for a better airline and don't be so naive.

I'm no fan of Ryanair, but this story smells fishy. As soon as you enter the age of a child passenger, the page immediately forces you to book a seat next to an adult, at an extra cost. So either they cheated the booking page by buying separately, or this is a booking error

You were the one flying with your family. You're the grown a*s adults and need to take responsibility for your screw up. Most people on that flight would have paid extra for the seats they were sitting in. It's entitled to assume they would have to move to accommodate your incompetence. Is it right for a 4 and 7 year old to sit separately, hell no. But that it happened is on you and only you.

I came here to say exactly what SotonScotty has said. You get seat reservations as part of your chosen fare and chose your seat at the time of booking. If you chose the cheapest fare, seat reservations aren't included. I've flown with Ryanair loads of times, this has never been an issue. Also, if I may, I would like to comment on the poll question with the 44% of people who don't fly with budget airlines - congratulations on being able to afford this, pretty impressive nowadays! May be a touch of sarcasm there!

I hate Ryanair as the next guy, but this is 100% OP's fault. If you travel with children you need to check in online as soon as you can; once you do so, you get assigned adjacent seats for up to 4 kids per parent. To help parents, they open the online check for pople traveling with children 60 DAYS in advance. Instead, she waited to be in the airport to check in, and then complained when no solutions were available anymore since most boarding pass had already been issued. This feel like either complete incompetence or social network ragebait.

Has she never flown with Ryanair or a similar airline? Because then I can understand not knowing about the need to pay for seats together. But in all other cases, I feel annoyed with her that she didn't pay but complains instead. That being said, I am surprised that airlines do it like this. Even if a parent didn't care about a kid being on their own, it's a safety risk for the kid, and a possible inconvenience to other travellers, I'm surprised airlines even allow it. I would expect that the airline would either always put young kids with their parents without extra pay, or that the airline would make it impossible to book a flight without paying for sitting together when someone books a flight involving a young child (the airline knows the age while booking the seats).

It's like tRump splitting up young families at the boarder. Except, at the end of the flight, you get your kids back.

We flown with Ryanair withboir 3yo. We payed to sit together, row 34 of 35. Our plane was delayed and upon boarding what a surprise, our row didn't exist. The plane had oy 33 rows. Luckily for us there were free seats available but, of course, not together. They didn't care out 3yo will have to sit next to a stranger but luckily other passengers volunteered to switch so that we could sit together. We switched to EasyJet after that, although the airport they fly from is further away.

The policy says kids under 12 will be seated next to AN adult. Did it say the adult in question would belong to the same party?

Budget airline, budget service. This is exactly why I like to fly delta... and I've never once had a problem. You get what you pay for (and sign up for). If you're tickets don't guarantee side-by-side seating, you can't expect that to be the case and be mad when you don't get what you hoped for.