Ryanair is no longer charging families to ensure children can sit next to their parents on flights. The Irish airline previously charged about £8 per flight for what it called a "mandatory family seat" — essentially, a paid guarantee that children aged 2 to 11 would sit beside an accompanying adult. That changed after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (a government body that enforces competition and consumer protection rules) opened an investigation in June 2026. Within two weeks, Ryanair had scrapped the fee, according to BBC News and Ryanair's own announcement.

Why did Ryanair have this rule in the first place? The airline says safety. It requires all children under 12 to sit beside an adult. But instead of always doing this automatically, Ryanair made families pay extra to guarantee it would happen. That created a problem: the airline was essentially charging families for following its own safety rule.

Other countries had already taken issue with this practice. In August 2024, Ryanair lost a legal case in Italy. Italian regulators ruled that airlines cannot charge passengers for the right to sit beside children under 12, Reuters reported. This Italian decision showed that regulators across Europe were moving in the same direction: they don't think it's fair to charge for seating that exists for safety reasons.

When the UK opened its investigation, Ryanair moved quickly. Rather than fight the regulator, the airline changed its policy. It now gives families free reserved seats automatically, so children aged 2 to 11 sit beside their parent or guardian at no extra cost.

Ryanair called this change a step toward "industry standard," as if it were simply updating its practices — not admitting the old rule was wrong. But from a passenger's perspective, the outcome is what matters: families no longer pay the fee.

This story fits a larger pattern. Low-cost airlines like Ryanair make money from extra charges: baggage fees, premium seat selections, payment surcharges. Regulators around the world are increasingly pushback against these charges when they involve services passengers have no choice but to use. A fee for choosing a window seat is different from a fee for keeping a child safe — one is optional, the other isn't. Airlines can't use that difference to their advantage anymore.

What we're seeing is that the window for charging families for safety-linked seating has effectively closed — at least in Italy and the UK. Other European regulators may follow suit, either by launching their own investigations or simply by accepting the precedent these two cases have set.