American Airlines have become the first airline to guarantee that children will be seated next to an accompanying adult, according to the airline’s updated customer service plan.
This comes as a response to industry calling for better family seating policies.
There are conditions to American’s guarantee, which applies to children 14 and younger.
They include a requirement that everyone in the party is booked in the same PNR, that adjacent seats are available in the same class of service at the time of booking and that the original flight isn’t switched to a smaller plane, among others.
Full details are available in the airline’s customer service plan.
Airlines have been gaining a bad reputation for their algorithms intentionally separating families to encourage them to pay extra for allocated seats together.
Many scheduled airlines do allow you to pre-book seats free of charge, but only very close to the departure date, often within 24 hours.
Low cost airlines such as Easyjet and Jet2 will only guarantee seats together if you pay for them.
