Airline seating: How to get around seat charges and sit with your family for free (2024)

FAMILIES can end up spending hundreds extra if they want to guarantee seats together on a flight.

But while worried parents think nothing of forking out to be with their kids, there are actually ways to get around these seating charges so you can sit with your family for free.

How do I dodge reservation fees?

Money Saving Expert has published a guide to dodging seat reservation fees – and highlighted how much it could save a family jetting off on holiday.

To select seats at the point of booking, passengers will have to fork out at least £3 per person each way.

At the top end, Virgin Atlantic charges £30 each way for passengers to select their flights.

It means for a family of four, return flights quickly add up to £240 on top of the fares they've already paid.

But as it happens, you might be able to dodge paying extra for your seat if you’re savvy with some clever airline hacks.

If you're going to try the route of checking in as early as possible to get seats together with the rest of the people in your booking, then you'll need to find out when your airline's check in opens.

It’s worth setting a reminder on your phone to check in as soon as it does.

Depending on when your flight is, this might be in the middle of the night - and you'll need to wake up and check in then to guarantee you're one of the first.

But setting an alarm can save you money in the long run.

Having the airline's app on your phone could also speed up the process as usually you will also receive an alert on your mobile.

When it comes to Ryanair though, it's a whole different ballgame.

Sun Online previously revealed that families booking on Ryanair have a 1 in 17,578 chance of getting seats on the same row.

And according to a Which? investigation, it's the only airline where it's actually worthwhile to pre-book seats if you're travelling with kids and want to sit with them.

Ryanair operates its own policies for seating families together.

The airline requires that children under 12 must be seated with an adult - and each adult is allocated up to four seats for children.

But in order to pick these seats, the adult in question must pay a mandatory four euro (£3) fee to reserve their seat first.

Sun Online previously revealed where you can find the best seats on different airlines.

We also reveal how you can get an entire row to yourself on an economy flight.

And if you're bumped off an overbooked flight this summer, you could be due compensation.

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