Booking a single parent holiday can involve a surprising amount of checking before you get anywhere near packing a suitcase. Does that room price apply to one adult travelling with children? Are the flight times manageable? Can you get from the airport to your accommodation without needing three hands? Somewhere in the middle of all that, you may also find yourself working out whether you need to pay extra to guarantee that your child will sit beside you on the plane. It is a peculiar thing to have to budget for: being able to look after the person you are taking on holiday.

The Guardian reported the proposed ban on family seating charges on 1 October. At Frolo, we welcome the prospect of removing that worry. For someone flying alone with children, knowing where everyone will sit is a practical part of planning the journey, alongside passports, transfers and remembering which bag contains the snacks.

What are the proposed changes to airline seating fees?

According to the Department for Transport’s announcement, published on 1 October and updated on 2 October 2026, the government plans to require airlines to seat children under 14 with a parent or accompanying adult without an additional charge. It says a parent and child can currently face charges of up to £104 for sitting together on a return journey. The announcement also proposes greater flexibility to correct simple booking-name errors for free.

These are planned reforms, rather than a blanket ban already in force. The government says delivery will follow Royal Assent of the Civil Aviation Bill, and its update removed an implementation date that had appeared in error. Parents booking flights now should therefore check their airline’s current family seating policy rather than assume the announcement has already changed their booking conditions. The proposal concerns keeping children with an accompanying adult; it should not be read as a promise of any particular seat or an upgrade.

Why flying alone with children makes certainty so valuable

Imagine boarding a flight with two children, a bag of activities and a toddler who has already decided they would rather be somewhere else. You are finding the row, stowing the luggage and trying to keep the boarding passes accessible. Now add uncertainty about whether your seats are together. Even if staff can resolve it, that is another conversation to have while other passengers are waiting to get past and your children are looking to you for reassurance. When you are the only adult responsible, there is nobody else to take over one part of the job.

That is why the language of an optional extra can feel so disconnected from the reality of single parent travel. A parent may be perfectly happy to accept whichever row they are allocated, without a preferred view or a speedy exit. They still need to be able to help a child with their seat belt, hear a quiet question or offer reassurance during take-off. At Frolo, we think a booking system should recognise that ordinary need from the moment a parent enters their children’s details, without leaving them to weigh up a fee against the possibility of a stressful journey.

The price of a single parent holiday needs to be clear

For a family working within a fixed holiday budget, certainty about the total cost matters. The question is not simply whether a particular fee sounds small in isolation. It is whether the price that first catches your eye bears a useful relationship to what you need to pay to make the trip work. If sitting with your child is essential to your journey, a headline fare that leaves you uncertain about that arrangement is difficult to compare with an alternative.

There is a wider single parent holiday conversation here too. A trip for one adult and two children needs to be straightforward to price in its own right, with clear information about accommodation, transfers and any conditions attached to children’s offers. Removing seating charges would address one part of that experience. We would also like travel companies to look at how easy it is for a single parent to establish the full cost of a suitable holiday without repeatedly checking whether an offer assumes a second adult.

Parents should be able to plan a holiday with confidence

It is possible to welcome this proposal and still wonder why families have had to spend time worrying about the issue at all. Single parents already make plenty of decisions about what they can afford and what will work for their children. A clear, consistent approach to family seating would give them one fewer uncertainty to manage. Its value would lie in the booking experience as well as any money saved: knowing that a basic part of travelling with children has been accounted for.

Flying alone with children can be exciting, funny, tiring and occasionally rather sticky. It can also be the beginning of a brilliant holiday together. At Frolo, we want single parents to feel that travel is open to their family, with practical arrangements that make sense for the number of adults actually coming along. Being confident that your child can sit beside you is a reasonable place to start.

Have airline seating fees affected a holiday you have booked as a single parent? Share your experience in the Frolo community, whether you have paid for peace of mind, struggled to understand a policy or found an airline that made the process easy. Those details help show what families need from a fairer booking experience.

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