Jetstar seating turbulence: Apology to family after young girl forced to sit away from parents

Jetstar has apologised to a 10-year-old schoolgirl after it refused to seat her near her family and then asked for a fee to move her for a flight from Brisbane to Sydney.

Simon Akero with his 10-year-old daughter Ashley who had to sit away from the rest of her family on a flight to Sydney this week. Picture: Contributed

A budget airline has apologised to a 10-year-old Wellington Point schoolgirl after it refused to seat her near her family on a flight from Brisbane to Sydney earlier this week.

Year 5 student Ashley Akero was seated 15 rows away from her siblings and parents on the

two-hour Jetstar flight.

But despite pleas before boarding the flight from her father, Simon Akero, Jetstar refused to change the seating arrangements unless the family paid more.

“They refused to change Ashley’s seat so she could be next to ours,’’ Mr Akero said.

“They did offer to move her closer, but to a different row and they wanted to charge a fee for this change, which I declined as Ashley was still not next to us where she could be supervised.

“With the publicity around Qantas at the moment, I found it concerning that Jetstar ignored its own seating policy regarding minors required to be seated next to a guardian.

“When I raised this with the booking staff, they refused to rectify the problem.

“There should be no charge to relocate and seat a minor near their guardian or parent and it should not be this difficult.”

JetStar’s website said passengers who chose not to select their seats when booking online would be assigned seats “randomly” at check in, at no additional cost.

The family’s seats were selected by the Jetstar seat booking system at the time of online check-in with mum Sarah, seated next to husband Simon and their two daughters Chelsea and Rachael.

They were told that because names were allocated to specific seats on boarding passes, Ashley was not allowed to swap seats with one of her parents.

Jetstar has apologised to the family of a young girl who was not allocated a seat next to her family for a flight to Sydney.

The country’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority said there was no regulatory requirement for the carriage of unaccompanied minors and said it was the flight operator’s responsibility to have those procedures in place.

A statement from Jetstar said the carrier had “sincerely apologised” to Ms Akero and her family.

“They were incorrectly told by our contact centre there would be a $7 fee to reassign a seat for their child, which is not in line with our policy,” Jetstar said.

“We have thousands of families travelling with us every day and our seating system is designed to ensure children are seated with an accompanying adult.

“If a child is not automatically allocated seats next to an accompanying adult, our airport staff and cabin crew can assist in reallocating seats on the day of travel at no additional cost, or families can call our contact centre ahead of time for assistance.

“We’ll be providing additional training to the contact centre agent involved in this error and have sent a reminder to our contact centre about our family seating policy.”

The apology came the same day as executives from the country’s top airlines were grilled in a Senate inquiry investigating a more competitive national aviation sector, stronger consumer protections, improvements to complaint handling processes and accessibility for the disabled.

The federal government is currently drafting an Aviation White Paper which is considering consumer protection issues and will set the scene for the next generation of development.

A federal Transport Department spokesman said the department could not comment on individual cases but “it would seem common sense that children should be seated with their parents wherever possible”.

The spokesman said regulation of breaches of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 were patrolled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

“In instances where passengers believe there has been a breach, the Act provides the ACCC with a range of enforcement remedies to address contraventions.

“The major Australian domestic airlines, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Regional Express and Jetstar, all have customer charters which outline the service standards that travellers can expect when they choose to travel with them.”