There are some unpleasant moments in air travel. One such moment for a family traveling with a young child is that when you take a seat on the plane you may find yourself separated from the young child.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), a small number of airlines including American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airlines and Alaska Airlines, it guarantees that children under the age of 13 will be seated with at least one adult and the same adult at no additional charge. However, booking a booking together doesn’t mean that you’re always sitting together. For example, Delta, United, Southwest, and Allegian Air are one of the airlines that do not guarantee adjacent seats for children under the age of 13 and their accompanying adults, unless travelers pay an additional fee for their seat allocation.
It encourages airlines to do everything they can to ensure that 13 or fewer children are sitting next to the accompanying adults at no additional charge, despite a notice from the DOT’s Air Consumer Protection Agency.
The problem faced by families is that basic economic fares or seats on low-cost airlines often do not include the option to pre-select a specific seat. Therefore, families must either pay more to sit together or risk sitting randomly apart from each other.
In 2023, United announced a partial solution. A dynamic seating map for groups traveling with children under the age of 12 highlights adjacent seats on the plane, allowing children under the age of 12 to sit next to adults at a party at no additional cost.
If seat selection is not included in airfare or travel classes, the fees for selecting the exact seat for your plane before boarding can range from $10 to $100 or more per person, depending on the airline, route and fare class.
Enter potentially uncomfortable boundary moments for families who have not allocated seats. Ask the person sitting next to your child if they care about changing seats with you. Of course, if that passenger is crushed by the middle seat and flying solo, you could be offering them something more appealing, and the decision on their part might be easy. But if you are asking someone to downgrade a potential seat paid for the booking, the situation is smarter.
“You should never expect to switch seating on a plane so that your family can sit together,” says Shelley Marmor, a travel advisor for the car rental website DiscoverCars. In addition to planning trips for others, Marmall is an avid traveler with a strong opinion on how plane seats should be unfolded.
If it’s important to you that your family is sitting together, plan it in advance and pay for it when booking, Marmore says. She adds that if she doesn’t pay for a particular seat and doesn’t have a strong preference for where she sits on the flight, she almost always agrees to a reasonable seating change to help her family sit together.
“There is an additional fee to choose a seat, but there are many things when traveling with kids, so expect strangers to give up on the spot of their choice.
Maureen Poshman, president of Promotion Communications, an Aspen-based public relations agency, said he believes passengers should agree to move their seats at all times if they help families sit together. She estimates she did that on more than 10 flights.
“Once upon a time I was in the middle seat, and generally it was a painless change that only moved a few lines backwards,” says Poshman. She calls the entire topic “a little calmic.” Because she remembers asking people to move their seats multiple times, and can sit with their kids when they are still young.
Poschman remembers the time when someone sat next to twins – at age 5, fortunately, veteran travelers are reinventing to give up their seat so that she can sit together.
“As long as they had their favorite stuffed animals, books and movie headphones, it was all good,” Poshman said of her daughter, adding that going through the incident would likely have made her more kind to others.
It is also important to note that if stuffed animals or electronics do not function to retain child content when they leave you, the airline crew will not be able to come to the rescue.
“As a flight attendant, I can’t switch seats to anyone,” says Heather Poole, a flight attendant and author of a major US airline. Cruising altitude: 35,000 feet of crash pad, crew drama, crazy passenger story.
“I think experienced travelers think they have the magical power to drive passengers,” she says.
According to the pool, many passengers don’t want to replace their recent seats as they pay extra for aisle seats, exit seats and seats near the front of the aircraft to make them more comfortable or get off the plane and get off the connection more quickly.
“If one parent is sitting next to the child, you’re fine and grateful. It’s difficult to bring a family of four together in a row,” says Poole.
She recommends paying an additional fee for at least one aisle seat if you do not want to pay together for all seats at the time of booking.
She says she is open to a variety of contingencies.
“Once I was traveling as a passenger, I placed my 5-year-old next to a businessman and went to my seat on another part of the plane. He asked if he wanted to switch seats right away,” she says.
That said, summer air travel is predicted to be a “recipe for frustration” per CNN. Many travelers (according to the Federal Aviation Administration, 2025 is expected to be the busiest summer of 15) and confusion caused by staffing issues and aging infrastructure is a good idea to hedge your bets.
If you’re flying on an airline that doesn’t guarantee a seat next to the adults that children will accompany without paying for pleasure, consider paying extra money to ensure intimacy.
“The bottom line says that kindness is optional, and the plan isn’t. The family needs to be responsible.
