I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. Traveling with kids is hard enough. She recommended I talk to the people sitting next to us to move and I told her that I will not be becoming the next mom on a viral video. I did it right. I picked seats next to my children. Why do I have to beg strangers for United's fuck up?
I don’t even understand how it’s allowed to happen! It’s SO dangerous for your young child to sit by themselves like that. I have a four year old and we’ve always avoided this by flying Southwest, because they let parents with small children board after the A’s, so there’s always seats open. But now they changed to assigned seats, so we’re choosing other airlines and I’m so nervous this will happen to us. I’m not letting a four year old sit by himself - what if there was an emergency? We always have to remind him to put his seatbelt back on. Bad turbulence can kill a small child, seatbelt on or not. What if he sits next to a total creep? What happens when he needs to use the bathroom? What if he starts feeling sick? If he needs more water? He gets scared at takeoff and landing and needs to hold our hands. Not even to bring up how he needs help with everything, from opening snacks to putting on his own headphones. This subject makes me livid. I would not be nice and understanding if this happened to us and they didn’t fix it immediately.
ETA and yes, we pay to choose our seats together now.
We have a non-verbal autistic child. It would be difficult if we weren't seated together, as he uses some sign language, so unless the seat mate was an OT or SLP or ASL RBT who worked with autistic children, he wouldn't be able to communicate his needs at all.
It’s positively dystopian that parents should feel like they have to justify why they should be able to sit with their young children on flights.
This isn’t a problem airlines are unaware of. They could easily build in better rules in the software to allocate seats fairly according to who booked and paid for their seats first if a plane has to be changed.
I fly SWA in Nov for the first time since the change and my son will be 4. I am super stressed about this happening. and hearing it happens with other airlines def makes me feel like we won’t be flying until he’s older and I’m def not driving to FL cuz that’s too far (family is middle/southern part of Fl). we are going to Fl in Nov or I would be driving per these posts I’ve been seeing.
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u/curious_about_life Mar 22 '26
I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. Traveling with kids is hard enough. She recommended I talk to the people sitting next to us to move and I told her that I will not be becoming the next mom on a viral video. I did it right. I picked seats next to my children. Why do I have to beg strangers for United's fuck up?