Amelia Romanos: Divide and conquer

I'd read about small children being seated away from parents, but assumed those were bad-luck cases. Photo / Getty Images

Amelia Romanos has her doubts about "preferred seat" booking.

As a parent who was recently assigned a seat 30 rows away from their toddler, claims that airlines are trying to drive up profits ring true.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority has launched an investigation into airline seating policies following complaints that it is unclear when passengers need to pay to sit together.

The CAA is also looking at whether undue pressure is applied to persuade people to pay, when they might not need to, and whether airlines are deliberately splitting up groups.

I'd read about small children being seated away from parents, but assumed those were bad-luck cases, perhaps a quirk in a booking system. However, my own experience leaves me convinced there's some fully shady shim-sham going down.

Travelling from London to Australia and back, my husband, our 1-year-old and I were split up on all four of our flights with Etihad.

Check-in staff reseated us together on two of the flights, but we were told the other two were full and they couldn't do anything to help.

The kicker was that Etihad had seated the baby by herself for the flight from Abu Dhabi to London. When I pointed this out to the check-in clerk in Brisbane, she gave me a shrug, and repeated that there was nothing she could do.

When I suggested that perhaps that was insane, she said I'd have to speak to staff in Abu Dhabi when we landed for the connecting flight.

So we did that, and they said we'd have to speak to the cabin crew … who told us "this is something you needed to deal with before you boarded the flight".

We considered dropping the baby off at her seat and saying "see you in nine hours", but instead ended up negotiating with other passengers to eventually get three seats together.

Things worked out, but it seemed wrong that such a situation could arise in the first place, or that it was left to us to resolve it. We were left depending on the kindness of strangers rather than the competency of an airline. When we raised the issue with our travel agent, we were told she had asked for three seats together but it was up to the airline to honour such a request.

I wrote to Etihad, and this is the reply:

"Prior to check-in, we actively review the flight's bookings to identify families travelling, so we can assign them seats together. Though we try to accommodate our guests in every way we can, last minute operational changes can sometimes affect seat assignments. This is why we cannot guarantee specific seat requests.

"Please be advised we now provide convenient options to enhance the guests' on-board experience by offering various seating programmes. Part of the seating programme is the sale of Preferred Seat. When travelling in Economy Class will be able to secure a seat reservation in one of the most desirable areas of the aircraft with Preferred Seat option for a small fee. For more information, please visit Book Preferred Seat page."

Now, I could be reading this wrong (I mean, I'm not, but I'll leave room for the possibility), but it seems to me Etihad used my complaint as an opportunity to advertise a paid service for seating choices. Kudos to the marketing team — it's definitely nailing its target audience, spreading the word about this fantastic service to those who need it most.

However, it also suggests to me that there's more than a little substance to claims they — and other airlines — are trying to make money by separating travelling groups.