If you’re flying with kids, here’s a little good news: You won’t have to pay extra for seat assignments—even on Ryanair, the notoriously fee-crazy Irish carrier.
Ryanair “reluctantly” adjusted its family seating policy this week after a U.K. government regulator forced its hand. Europe’s largest discount carrier had spent years charging parents an extra fee just to sit next to their own children.
CEO Michael O’Leary says regulators don’t understand what’s good for consumers. But the fee is going away—sort of. Families who don’t pay Ryanair’s seat selection fees now get free seats together after check-in, mostly at the back of the plane.
That word “reluctantly” says everything about how the industry sees fees in 2026. A fee isn’t a problem to be fixed, but territory to be defended.
So maybe it’s worth asking a bigger question: What kinds of fees should be off limits, and is there a line the airlines should never cross?
What happened to family seating on Ryanair?
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an investigation on June 11, finding that Ryanair was the only major airline flying out of the U.K. to charge parents for what it called a “mandatory family seat,” roughly 8 British pounds each way for an adult traveling with children aged 2 to 11.
The British regulator was also looking at whether the fee was “dripped” into the booking late, after the headline price, rather than shown upfront.
Two weeks later, Ryanair caved while insisting it had done nothing wrong. The CMA’s response was dry: It will test the airline’s compliance.
Some of us can travel with the minimum, so we welcome being able to pay a lower fare as a result. But the line should always stop at things that are basically mandatory. You need water on a flight, you need access to a WC, and I would argue that you need to sit with your young child. I mean, could they charge $50 extra for a seatbelt even though it is mandatory?
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What’s already considered off limits
In the U.S., charging a parent to sit beside a young child has become the clearest example of a fee that crossed a line. Five carriers—Alaska, American, Frontier, JetBlue and Hawaiian—have committed on the Transportation Department’s family seating dashboard to seating kids 13 and under next to an accompanying adult at no extra charge, subject to conditions.
The other large carriers say they’ll “try” but stop short of a guarantee.
The Department of Transportation proposed a ban on these fees in 2024. That rule got pulled back, and a related fee-disclosure rule was blocked in court, so the dashboard is mostly what’s left. These are voluntary promises, not a federal mandate.
Here’s where things get murky
Family seating is an easy case. Most people agree no parent should pay extra to supervise their own child at 35,000 feet. A few areas where the line is genuinely blurry:
- Early boarding for people who need it. Passengers using wheelchairs, travelers with disabilities and families with small children have long boarded first, free. But some carriers now sell “priority boarding” that competes for the same early slots. Nobody charges a wheelchair user to board early, and it’s hard to imagine anyone trying. But the space around that courtesy keeps shrinking as more priority boarding gets sold.
- Water. On a discount airline flight from Madrid to Buenos Aires, I was offered a bottle of water for sale. There was no “free” water option. I declined. Basic hydration on a marathon flight isn’t a perk; it’s a necessity. Most airlines still hand out water for free, but they don’t have to.
- The bag you’re already carrying. This one has gotten worse. United now charges a gate-handling fee on basic economy when a passenger shows up with a full-size carry-on that the fare doesn’t cover, and it costs more at the gate than a checked bag would have cost at booking. A Senate subcommittee found that Spirit and Frontier paid gate agents a combined $26 million in bonuses to catch travelers with oversized bags and route them into a fee. A charge for the bag in your hand, with a bounty on the employee who spots it, is a long way from selling an upgrade.
Then there’s the seat itself, even without kids. The same Senate report found five U.S. carriers collected more than $12 billion in seat fees from 2018 to 2023, a charge for picking a spot on a flight on which you’ve already bought a ticket.
What the airlines say
The aviation industry claims an unbundled fare provides consumers with the lowest possible base price. A carrier will argue that charging for extras allows passengers to pay only for what they use. It says a fee for early boarding or specific seat assignments keeps the overall cost of travel low for everyone else. By charging for drinking water or premium assistance, the airline insists it is offering a choice rather than a mandate. Airlines believe passengers prefer cheap tickets over inclusive service.
Should this be illegal?
And a few follow-up questions:
If you’d ban them: which fee bothers you most, and where would you draw the line between a basic service and a real extra?
If you’d let the market decide: what stops a race to the bottom, where every courtesy eventually carries a price tag?
My take
Ryanair’s family seating fee was never really about covering a cost. It was about finding out what people would tolerate. I believe there’s a red line, and it isn’t about any single fee. It’s about value. Seating a child with a parent is not an upgrade. Water on a long flight is not a luxury. The carry-on in your hand is not a surprise. Once a carrier starts billing for the essentials, and pays a bonus to the employee who flags them, decorum has already lost the argument. The job of a regulator, and of the rest of us, is to notice before “reluctantly” becomes the only word left.
Your turn
Tell me about the most absurd fee an airline has ever tried to charge you, and whether you paid it. Our comments are open.
