Random Seat Allocation: Is it worth the risk?

You are excited to go on holiday and you find a cheap flight. Bargain! It looks too good to be true … or is it? With the cost of booking seats and extra luggage the cost can quickly escalate. Read on for my experience with random seat allocation.

As a family of five, I have been ultra cautious when booking flights. When a child is 12 or under, an adult is guaranteed to be next to them or within a row or two. The rest of the family can sit anywhere but at least the younger ones have an adult.

We had a city break to Athens from London booked for four days and did not pay for either luggage or seats. We’re very comfortable with minimal packing and have managed two week holidays on just a 10kg cabin bag, so have never needed to buy the upgrade package to include seats and luggage especially as it can double/triple the cost of the flights!

Check-in Chicken. The fear is real!

Not booking seats beforehand feels like playing chicken with the system. You can check in 24 hours before your flight with random seat allocation. The game is to wait to check in until the very last minute. If you book as soon as the 24 hours start, you are likely to get random middle seats dotted about the plane. The later you leave check in, the more likely you will get a window or aisle seat and possibly sit a bit nearer each other. The theory is, that the airlines want to give you undesirable seats so you give in and pay for a better one. If you wait until the last minute, you can get some brilliant seats – extra legroom, a row to yourself etc . . . So do you dare wait?

At the time, my youngest was 10 year old so I was hopeful one adult would be sat with him. However, we did have two teenagers so who knew where they would end up!

The return flight was be an issue for me as we would have had to check in from our apartment in Athens but not be able to print off the boarding passes. The Wizz Air app was downloaded so it was an experiment to see how it worked out. Top tip: Have a power bank and cable to make sure your phone doesn’t run out of charge if you are relying on apps.

I get anxious relying on Tech and not paper copies so always travel with both if I can.

Cost Breakdown

The flights to Athens from London were £453.70 for four adults and one child (school holiday prices). This was booking the Travel light basic fare with a carry on bag (40x30x20cm).

Wizz Go/Family Go includes seat selection, cabin bag (55x40x23cm max 10kg), checked in bag (149x119x171cm max 20kg) and a carry on. You can check in 30 days before departure.

Why isn’t there an option for a cabin bag and seat selection as this seems overkill to have a check in bag as well for shorter trips!

Wizz Plus/Family Plus includes the same but increases the checked in baggage to 32kg. It also allows you to change your flight date without charge.

So, we decided to play chicken. Rucksack only (here’s hoping the vacuum bags do their job!) and only booking in 24 hours before the flight. Sorry kids!

Random Seat Allocation Reality Check

However, a few days before we left for Athens, I semi-chickened out. As a family, we discussed how the children would feel sitting in random seats and the look of horror on all three faces, 17 year old included was hilarious! 10 year old son didn’t want to risk not getting either parent next to him so I relented and the full experiment will have to wait until another time. We also discussed that travelling together is part of the holiday so on a 3.5 hour flight, talking together, playing electronic games etc makes the journey more fun. So in the end we conducted a semi-experiment:

To my disgust, the cost of booking a seat was £16 per person per leg of the journey. Ryan Air – all is forgiven! (They charge £8 for a standard seat) so to give it a shot, I booked three seats together leaving one adult with the 10 year old to test random allocation. The thinking being that worst case scenario, the three children will sit together, my husband and I elsewhere or that they do end up putting an adult with child so we would have a three and two seat allocation. We shall see!

The total cost of booking three seats on both legs of the journey was £102 (gulp!) It hurts, but worth it to reduce the anxiety for the kids (and me!).

The outgoing leg worked well. The three paid for seats were of course together, so the two boys and my husband sat together. I checked in 24 hours beforehand so the two random allocated seats were in the same row but a middle seat between them. Which my 15 year old daughter and I took. When on the plane, I asked the man in the middle seat if he would like the window seat and he agreed so we did actually sit next to each other. Once I had checked in with Wizz Air, there was no option to purchase a seat to move if I wasn’t happy with the selection. I have heard that this is different with Ryan air.

The return journey was a different matter. We had paid for three seats together so that was fine. BUT, the two random seats (bearing in mind, this was for a young child and parent) were in two different rows, both middle seats. There was no option at this stage to change seats even for a fee on the website or app.

When we arrived at the airport, we headed to check in to see what could be done – out of principle now! We explained that my 10 year old son was placed in a middle row seat away from a parent but they were not able to change it. In the end, we agreed to pay £18 each seat (!) for the two seats to change so we had three seats together and two seats together.

However, in the end, once on the plane, all seats were shuffled anyway. For some unknown reason, we had been highlighted on the seat manifesto to fill the emergency row seats as we were asked to move from our allocated seats to these rows. Two children had a row to themselves (under 16 so couldn’t sit in an emergency row), my husband and I had an emergency row to ourselves and our 17 year old had an emergency row to himself. Phew!

Lessons learned

Both myself and the children prefer sitting together so worth the seat reservation fees for reducing the anxiety alone.
Wizz Air charge extortionate fees for seat reservations!
I would never rely on random seat allocation sitting you and your young children together even though their policy states it does!

In summary, we all did agree that the journey is part of the holiday so sitting together is important to us as a family so will be paying in some form to sit us together on future flights. Check-in chicken? Not for us!