A few years ago, the DGCA issued a circular permitting airlines to generate revenue by charging for extras such as preferential seating, meals, snacks, etc. However, when the circular was expanded to allow all seats on the plane to be monetised, airlines went bonkers with their sale of seats (especially during COVID-19 times, when web check-in became compulsory).

Certain Indian airlines became ruthless with their algorithms, and travellers who did not pay up were allocated seats apart from each other on the plane. Now, while it doesn’t matter to me personally where I am seated on a plane for a couple of hours, it matters to others. Such as those travelling kids,  and I empathise with them.

Here is a viral thread about how IndiGo placed four passengers of a family in four different seats on a plane.

https://twitter.com/Dr_AkshayBaheti/status/1774389534253584415

He further investigated IndiGo’s practices regarding seat availability.

Currently, due to lack of any binding rules, airlines have a free hand in manipulating seating to maximize their earning. For example, when you Web checkin, Indigo brazenly tells you that auto seat assignment can give minors a separate seat from adults unless you purchase a seat pic.twitter.com/JAzWp3d774

— Akshay Baheti (@Dr_AkshayBaheti) April 22, 2024

In the United States, families felt similarly long enough that the US Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP), in July 2022, wrote up a notice to encourage U.S. Airlines to have policies that enable children aged 13 or younger to be seated adjacent to an accompanying adult at no additional cost. There is now a dashboard of all the airlines that have enabled policies to have kids be seated with their accompanying parents.

DGCA notifies airlines to provide free seats for kids with their parents.

As a part of the new regulations (Air Travel Circular 1 of 2024), the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked airlines to ensure that children below 12 years are allocated seats with at least one parent or guardian on a flight. The Air Transport Circular (ATC) 01 of 2024, issued by the DGCA, permits scheduled airlines to charge additional fees for services like zero baggage, preferential seating, meals, snacks, beverages, and transporting musical instruments. Passengers can pay for these services voluntarily or not avail of them.

In a statement, the DGCA said,

Airlines shall ensure that children up to the age of 12 years are allocated seats with at least one of their parents/guardians, who are travelling on the same PNR, and a record of the same shall be maintained.

The new circular is also live on the DGCA website. The timeline by which the DGCA expects the airlines to tinker with their programming to implement this is unclear, but a month from now is a good time to start seeing results.

Bottomline

The DGCA, India’s aviation regulator, has notified that airlines now need to ensure that kids under 12 should be accommodated on flights next to at least one of their parent/guardian, free of charge, on a plane. The implementation deadline is unclear yet but it should be soon.

What do you make of the new rules that want airlines to have kids sit next to their parents on flights from here on?

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