Shea Bartlett was walking to the gate at Miami International Airport to board her Delta flight earlier this month when she got an alert that she and her daughter had been upgraded to seats with more legroom. Nice, she thought.
But when they tried to board, Bartlett, who works in communications, learned that there had been an issue with the new seats, so they had been changed again — to spots in different rows. Bartlett’s daughter is 4, and the Washington, D.C. resident had paid to make sure their original seats would be together.
The original seats were no longer available, so Bartlett said the gate agent told her to speak to the flight attendant on the plane. The flight attendant told her to ask other passengers to switch.
“I just burst into tears, which is super embarrassing,” said Bartlett, who pointed to the stress of the situation and pregnancy hormones for her emotions. Another passenger offered to swap so Bartlett, who was 23 weeks pregnant at the time, could sit with her daughter.
For years, parents have been driven if not to tears, then to stressed-out pleas and angry social-media rants when their young kids have been given seats next to strangers on a plane. The reasons vary: Some parents purchased the lowest fares that only allow seat selection for an extra fee. Some booked last-minute with few available seats left. Some paid to choose seats with their kids but got reassigned after an aircraft shuffle.
I don’t know if it’s Delta, or all US airlines, but traveling as a family w small kids wanting to sit together is a stressful experience. Booked the ticket in advance, chose seats. Got to airport early, checked in. Between boarding pass printed & boarding: they moved us apart.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) May 14, 2024
Lawmakers have sought to address the issue since 2016, as airlines added fees for options that were once included in the base fare. But no regulation is in place yet to force airlines to keep families together without charging extra for the privilege. Airlines try to resolve the issues in advance, or urge families to work it out on the plane, but it’s not clear how often families end up waiting for another flight if they can’t find seats together — or how much hassle they endure in the process.
“To me, it’s ridiculous that we’re still talking about this a decade later,” said William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, who has advocated for fee-free family seating for more than 10 years.
A rule, still under review
Congress told the Department of Transportation in 2016 to review the issue and direct airlines to put family-friendly policies in place, “if appropriate.” McGee called that language a loophole and said no regulation came of the directive.
In 2024, the bill that funded the Federal Aviation Administration included stronger language, prohibiting airlines from charging fees for kids younger than 14 to sit next to a parent. The bill directed the Department of Transportation to get the ball rolling with a proposed rule, the first step in a lengthy process.
“Many airlines still don’t guarantee family seating, which means parents wonder if they’ll have to pay extra just to be seated with their young child,” then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a news release announcing the rule in August 2024. “Flying with children is already complicated enough without having to worry about that.”
I’m relieved the situation was resolved, but the whole experience was very stressful. I’m hesitant to book @JetBlue again after this trip. We used to love them and we fly a lot (my son has been on 14 flights and he’s not even 2). We have bought him a seat on every flight. As a parent traveling solo, I’m nervous this will happen again. Thoughts? *Note – the crew on this flight were incredible. So helpful and kind.* #traveltiktok #flyingwithkids #traveltips #airlinetiktok
A year and a half — and a new administration — later, the rule is still in regulatory purgatory. According to the Transportation Department, it remains under review.
“DOT is considering the feedback received from all stakeholders, including passengers and airlines,” the department said in a statement. In December, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced a plan to make travel more family-friendly with an emphasis on more modern amenities in airport terminals. The seating rule did not get a mention in that initiative.
Under pressure from the Biden administration, some airlines changed their policies to guarantee adjacent seats for kids under 13 and a guardian. Those commitments are outlined on a family seating dashboard that launched in 2023.
Delta, for example, says on its website that the airline “strives to seat family members together upon request” and tells families to call a reservations number if they can’t get seat assignments together on the website or app. Spokesman Drake Castañeda said that if a parent and child would be separated in an upgrade, the upgrade should not go through. It would be up to a gate agent to help move seats around if someone’s new assignment did separate them from a minor.
Still, McGee said the voluntary moves are not enough.
“I’m not saying they go out of their way to make this a mess,” McGee said. “But they don’t always take care of this problem. We see ample evidence of it all the time. That’s why we have regulations, that’s why we have laws in this country.”
Southwest enters the mix
Despite the individual policies, passengers still complain about experiences on multiple U.S. airlines. The bulk of the ire lately has been directed at Southwest, which moved away from its former open-seating policy that allowed families with young kids to board early enough that they could usually find seats together.
Southwest moved to assigned seating in late January, with a range of amenities that go along with each price point. Those who pay the cheapest price have to wait until they check in to get a seat assignment. But by that time, no adjacent options may be left. In the past couple weeks, multiple families have said they were shocked to find that kids as young as 2 had been assigned seats apart from their parents.
The Department of Transportation said in a statement that it was “aware of the specific concerns regarding Southwest’s recent transition to assigned seating and is monitoring how these changes impact the ability of families to stay together during the boarding process.”
Southwest spokesman Chris Perry said if a parent who books a basic fare isn’t happy with their seat assignment, they should speak with a customer service agent at the gate to see whether it can be changed.
“We still make every effort to make sure families can sit together,” he said.
Chloé Gibbs, 32, of Houston, has been flying Southwest all her life. But when she tried to check into a flight a couple weeks ago to return from visiting her parents in Midland, Texas, she wasn’t able to. And then she realized her 2-year-old and 4-year-old were assigned seats in different rows from her and from each other. She was also traveling with an infant as a lap baby.
Gibbs believes her fares were in the cheapest category — her mother had booked the tickets — but said everyone had been seated next to each other on the flight from Houston. When she called the airline to ask for help, she said the agent chastised her for not upgrading her seats so she could choose where her kids would sit. She said another customer service worker told her she couldn’t pick a seat because of the lap baby.
At the airport, Gibbs, a content creator and marketing director for a nonprofit, was directed to the gate agent. “I’m like sweating, like literally drenched in my sweatshirt I was so stressed out,” she said. She said the employees were kind, tried to help figure out how to avoid the issue with the lap baby in the future, and ultimately put her in the last row with her kids. She posted a video on TikTok warning parents to upgrade their tickets to be guaranteed seats with their kids.
She said the ordeal has added a wrinkle to a planned fall trip to Chicago.
“Now we’re like, do we even want to fly with Southwest?” she said. “It doesn’t even seem to be worth it anymore.”
Once great airline, @SouthwestAir, has gone down hill extremely quickly. I am a once-proud A-list preferred member. On a recent trip, under the new insane seating plan, my family which includes very young children was split up all over the plane after reserving specific seats.…
— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) February 17, 2026
Hot takes galore
Families who scramble to find seats together on the plane — typically when they didn’t pay extra to choose seats — often spark debate when their situation is detailed on social media.
Cari Garcia, a food blogger from Miami, was waiting for a 7 a.m. JetBlue flight from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles in January when she saw a fellow passenger realize that his family’s seats were spread around the plane. She posted on Threads after the man said he would just rearrange their seats on the plane so the young kids could sit with the adults in their party.
Her Threads post “spiraled out of control,” she said, with some people saying they would refuse to switch seats in that scenario and some placing blame on the airline for not putting the kids with adults.
“I completely agree that families should, if you’re booking the seats together and buying all the seats in one go, they should automatically be seated next to each other,” she said.
Still, she pays extra to choose seats when she flies with her 9-year-old son.
“I would rather pay for my peace of mind than to kind of leave it up in the air,” she said.
my wife and two kids (5 and 2) are flying @SouthwestAir today. and because i refuse to pay for seats, their seats were auto assigned. my 2 year old in his own row without his mom or sister. i sorta figured when the websites breaks out age 0-4, they’d factor this in but nah… pic.twitter.com/7D0M3OLhiq
— Cory Watilo (@watilo) February 12, 2026
Cory Watilo, a Tampa-based software designer for a Silicon Valley startup, posted on X earlier this month when Southwest assigned seats to his wife, Tara, and kids after he did not pay extra for specific seats.
“I figured worst-case scenario they would at least put the 2-year-old next to my wife, but instead he got put into a separate row entirely,” Watilo said in an interview with The Washington Post. Commenters called him cheap and a bad father. Some headlines inaccurately said that the mother and son were separated on the plane. In fact, his wife asked someone to swap seats and that person agreed with no issue.
In a comment on X, Watilo said there should be automatic seating assignment rules written in code for minors who are traveling with adults. He told The Post he wanted to make sure Southwest knew about the flaw in the system and said he thinks public awareness and scrutiny — and not necessarily more regulation — will push the airline to address the issue.
“This is one of those situations where I’m pretty sure anyone with some common sense or decency should be like: a 2-year-old should sit with their parents,” he said.
The post Families frustrated with airline seating: ‘A 2-year-old should sit with their parents’ appeared first on Washington Post.
