The Transportation Department has drafted regulations that would require airlines to enable children ages 13 and under to sit with a supervising adult free of charge.
The formal rulemaking process comes pursuant to a mandate included in the FAA Reauthorization Act, a law passed in May that called on the DOT to issue the proposed regulations within 180 days of passage. But it's also a continuation of a push the DOT initiated in 2022 to cajole airlines into ensuring that parents and young children don't have to pay extra to sit together.
"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," DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Thursday. "Flying with children is already complicated enough without having to worry about that."
Under the proposed rule, airlines would have 48 hours from the time of a booking to issue seat assignments that place parents or guardians next to the children they are accompanying, provided such seats are available.
In cases in which multiple young children are traveling, airlines would also meet the proposed requirement by seating children directly in front or in back of their adult companion, or directly across the aisle.
The proposed rule also stipulates that if adjacent seats aren't available at the time of booking, airlines would have to offer customers the choice taking a refund or waiting for such seating to open up. If the customer chooses to wait but adjacent seats don't open prior to boarding, airlines would have to give those flyers the choice of boarding anyway or allowing them to rebook, free of charge, on the next flight with available adjacent seating.
The proposed rule also would require airlines to conspicuously disclose, upfront in the booking process, that passengers have the right to free family seating.
Airlines that violate the policy would be subject to fines for each infraction.
The DOT's Airline Customer Service Dashboard already has a section detailing which airlines currently commit to providing free adjacent seating for children 13 and under and their parents or guardians at least one day before the flight. Of the 10 primary U.S. carriers, only Alaska, American, Frontier and JetBlue meet that standard.