The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Don’t charge extra for parents to sit with kids, airlines urged
DOT recommendation follows president’s criticism of ‘junk fees.’
The U.S. Department of Transportation is pushing airlines to allow parents to sit with young children on flights without having to pay extra fees, and says some carriers have committed to do that.
Allowing families to sit together without paying extra fees has been a focus of the Biden administration for months. President Joe Biden included it in his State of the Union address last month as part of a condemnation of “junk fees” he said his administration is trying to stop.
“I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it,” Biden said. He pledged to “prohibit airlines from charging up to $50 round trip for families just to sit together.”
But not all airlines have signed on, and the DOT this week published on its website a “Family Seating Dashboard” to show that.
The chart on the DOT website shows that American, Alaska and Frontier airlines guarantee adjacent seats for children 13 or under and an accompanying adult at no additional cost for all fare types, subject to limited conditions.
Other carriers, including Atlanta-based Delta and Southwest, have red X’s showing they have not made that commitment.
“Parents traveling with young kids should be able to sit together without an airline forcing them to pay junk fees,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “All airlines should do this promptly, even as we move forward to develop a rule establishing this as a requirement across the board.”
At Hartsfield-jackson International Airport, Delta is the largest airline, followed by Southwest.
A key reason Delta hasn’t made the fee-free family seating guarantee is that its “basic economy” fares do not come with advance seat assignments. And if a flight is nearly full when booking in the main cabin without many seats next to each other, it may cost extra for “preferred seats” in the exit row, bulkhead or front.
Delta said customers can contact customer service agents to address their concerns, adding that “regardless of the ticket class purchased, we will always work with customers on a caseby-case basis to ensure their family seating needs are met.”
“At Delta, seating families together is a top priority,” spokeswoman Catherine Morrow said. The airline uses technology and trains employees to prioritize seating families together, she said.
Dallas-based Southwest does not make such a guarantee because it does not have assigned seating.
“Customers are welcome to choose — for free — any open seat once on board the aircraft,” spokeswoman Laura Swift said.
Southwest noted it never charges for seat assignments, and its open seating policy allows family boarding between the A and B groups — roughly one-third of the way through the boarding process. Those with children 6 or younger can board during family boarding.
During a test of alternate boarding procedures at Hartsfield-jackson in recent months, Southwest allowed families to board earlier — before the A group and general boarding, but after preboarding.
Southwest’s tests at several gates in Atlanta — which included more dynamic digital signs for boarding, high-tempo music in the jet bridge and a self-service kiosk in the gate area — were part of an ongoing effort to reduce the length of time needed to get an aircraft ready for takeoff.
“This effort is not an indication of a forthcoming policy change; we simply work to trial various concepts to ensure our operation is performing at optimal levels,” Swift said.
The DOT said it is starting on a rule-making process to ensure adults can sit next to their young children, but that process can take years. The Biden administration also plans to send proposed legislation to Congress.