The European Parliament’s Petitions Committee, which reviews individual complaints, agreed on Thursday to study a complaint filed by a Spanish citizen against how airlines assign seats at random and the extra charges families and groups must pay to sit together when traveling.
Alfonso Rodríguez Sánchez, connected with the consumer organization Facua in the Balearic Islands, accused airlines of pocketing a “huge profit” with this practice, calling it a “harmful” policy that began as a hallmark of low-cost carriers but has since become widespread across the industry.
Rodríguez claimed that families end up paying an “extra charge of 20 to 40 euros” to secure adjacent seats when they oppose random seat allocation, and argued that the revenue from this practice along with fees for carry-on baggage is becoming the main income source for many airlines.
European law currently requires that children under 12 travel with their accompanying adults or, if that is not possible, be seated in the same row. Infants under 24 months may sit on a parent’s lap as well.
He pointed to incidents where passengers had to separate from their children aged 13 or 14, noting that crew members have had to deal with anger from passengers; he warned this could even impact flight safety if an anxious passenger cannot sit with a companion.
For this reason, he urged MEPs to push for changes to the European regulations that govern these issues and to require airlines to end this practice, which he said is carried out deliberately. He claimed that airlines use an algorithm to detect reservations made by people whose surnames are similar and then automatically separate them.
Any reform would need to come from the European Commission, as the sole EU institution with the power to initiate legislation, and it participated in the Thursday plenary session to back Rodríguez’s request for study.
One EU representative commented that price-fragmentation policies have become more common, suggesting additional charges for every service component, whether seat assignment, baggage, meals, or beverages, and joked that a charge for smiling might soon appear, illustrating the broader trend toward unbundling services.
The speaker admitted that current aviation law focuses more on safety and ensuring an optimal seating plan to facilitate safe evacuations in emergencies, while commercial pricing mechanisms fall outside the present rule framework and are seen as business decisions.
All MEPs who spoke in the session voiced support for Rodríguez’s complaint, leading the chair of the EP Petitions Committee, Dolors Montserrat, to formally accept the complaint for study by the committee.
Spanish MEP Pablo Arias Echeverría, affiliated with the People’s Party, supported regulating seating for passengers over 12 who want to sit with their parents, arguing that promotional pricing should not double once onboard and that seats should not be withheld as a standard practice.
Socialist MEP Cristina Maestre criticized the 12-year age limit as nonsensical, stating that a minor is a minor; while Vox’s MEP Margarita de la Pisa described random seating as an abuse faced by families.
In summary, the debate highlighted concerns about personal experiences of families, the potential safety implications of seating fragmentation, and the need for measured regulatory action to protect passenger rights while allowing airlines to manage pricing in a competitive market.