There are lots of articles providing tips with flying with kids but my shoulders are already in knots just from attempting to purchase tickets for a flight with my tots. This is partly my fault, I’ll admit. While logged onto an airline website to purchase a flight, when I got to the page where I could select my seats, it showed me a key that illustrated available seats were marked a certain color. It also including a color code for the unavailable seats, emergency row seats, etc. However, the seat chart did not display any colors; all the seats were just shaded light blue, not coinciding to any of the choices on the key. My mistake was in selecting seats anyway; incorrectly assuming it would alert me if the seats were not available. Only after I hit “purchase” did my completed itinerary get returned to me, no longer illustrating the selected seats, as the pre-purchase itinerary did.
So, I called the airline. The customer service representative said there were no seats available for selection. “Is the flight sold out?” I immediately asked. No, the seats are just not available for the airline to assign, I was told. They were not to be assigned until at the airport because, and I’ve never realized this was an option, a certain number of seats are in the hands of the airport and they cannot be assigned until the person is at the airport to claim a seat assignment.
My kids are 4 and 5. I cannot risk having one in the back of the plane and one in the front and me scurrying back and forth between the beverage cart to make sure they weren’t standing in their seat mate’s lap, crying to use the bathroom, or spilling their glass of milk. And I told the representative as much. She apologized for the inconvenience.
I felt absolutely trapped, and extremely frustrated. Why wasn’t the seat chart working in a way that would explain that seat selection was not allowed? Why did it allow me to select seats and show me those seats throughout the process and only after purchase illustrate the lack of seat assignments? It took me another 45 minutes to find a flight with a seating chart illustrating seats that could be confirmed at purchase.
I eventually found a flight where I could sit by one of my kids while the other sits in front of us. Maybe the person who choose the aisle seat will take pity on me and swap their seat for my daughter’s window seat one row up so I can have both my kids sit beside me? (I’ll position my 4-year-old son in the middle seat to help discourage him from wanting his aisle seat!) I know I’ll be in knots before that flight as I seek out the person to try to get the swap made. I’m hopeful the desk representative will take pity on me and call forth the person occupying that seat before boarding so I don’t have to sit on the plane, eagerly awaiting the person who will be sitting beside us, pouncing on him before he even has time to grasp that I’m addressing him.
Maybe airlines should create a section on their websites that allow for seat swapping. We could all chat in an online community and move things around until we’re all comfortable. Utopia! OK, so it doesn’t exist. And I, like many moms, will remain in knots until we land in our vacation destination.
