No More Paying to Sit With Your Own Children on a Plane

The European Parliament has approved a genuine overhaul of air passenger rights, the first meaningful update to the rules since 2004 and the end of a fight that had been stalled in negotiation for more than a decade. The headline change is simple to state and considerably harder to have actually secured: airlines can no longer charge parents extra to sit next to their own children.

The family seating rule, in plain terms

Under the new regulation, any adult travelling with a child under 14 must be seated next to that child at no additional cost. This directly targets a practice that has steadily become standard across much of the budget airline sector, where dynamic seat pricing has meant families either paid a premium per seat to sit together or risked being split up across a cabin. The rule extends similar protection to passengers with reduced mobility and pregnant women travelling with an accompanying person, who must also be seated together free of charge, and the same groups now gain priority boarding as well.