Ryanair has announced that as from 1st September it will be mandatory for adults travelling with children under-12 to purchase a reserved seat, but those children under-12 will receive free of charge reserved seats.

The airline said that under this new policy, one adult in every booking with children (U12) must purchase a reserved seat at the time of booking (which will cost €4) and then all children (U12) in the same booking will receive free reserved seats.

This is to ensure that these customers are always seated together, Ryanair said, "however it will not be mandatory for teenagers and other adults in the booking to purchase a reserved seat

Ryanair added that it is introducing this initiative after a busy summer when most of Ryanair flights were full (load factor 94%) but many adults travelling with young children did not select reserved seats and were randomly allocated seats that were not together (due to the large number of Ryanair customers who are already reserving their preferred seats).

According to the airline, "this caused boarding issues when crews would try to reseat passengers with young children. Ryanair's crews cannot move customers who have already paid for their preferred seats to simply accommodate other customers who are travelling with young children, who declined to reserve their seats and chose to have randomly allocated seats."

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