Minister urges airlines to stop separating parents, children
Canada’s transport minister quietly wrote to the heads of every major airline in the country earlier this year to try and stamp out a practice where parents were being seated separately from their children on flights.
In the March letter, Lisa Raitt called the issue one “where logic should prevail’’ and encouraged the airlines to ensure parents were seated with their young children whenever possible.
She asked the airlines to come up with some way to eliminate such incidents, provide “greater predictability’’ to parents and “minimize the challenges that parents face when they embark on air travel with children.’’
A briefing note accompanying the letter suggests the missive wasn’t intended to signal that the federal government was going to legislate an end to the practice by airlines, but to promote what Raitt’s officials called “an industry-led solution to avoid such situations.’’
Still, Transport Canada officials wrote in the briefing note that they were “exploring opportunities to address this issue and input from air carriers would be useful in that regard.’’
A copy of the letter and briefing note were obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
There are no federal rules requiring parents to be seated next to their children on flights, nor is it a guarantee under airline policy that a parent or guardian will automatically get a seat next to children under age 12.
In dismissing a complaint against six airlines, the Canadian Transport Agency ruled late last year that ticketing rules that don’t guarantee adjoining seats for parents and their children were neither unreasonable nor discriminatory.
The problem may be a result of how passengers can select their seats.
Some airlines charge a seat-selection fee on lower-fare tickets at the time of purchase _ a practice “typical of an industry where margins are thin’’ and carriers are looking for extra revenue without raising ticket prices, the briefing note says.
Some passengers may not pay the fee, instead hoping to pick their seats when they check in, putting them in competition with other passengers in the “first-come, first-served’’ race for seats, the note says.