Senator Schumer Pressures Airlines to Keep Families Together

Sen. Charles Schumer, a longtime thorn in the side of the aviation industry, is on the warpath against airlines.

This time, Schumer (D-NY) wants carriers to stop separating parents and their children when seated for flights, he wrote on Sunday.

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With virtually all airlines charging extra to select your own seat, families are at the vagaries of the airlines when three, four, five and sometimes more members are traveling together. Schumer said there should be policies in place that allow parents to sit together with children under the age of 13. He slammed the Federal Aviation Administration for failing to enact such policies after introducing The FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016.

“While complaints by parents seated rows away from their own kids on flights continue to climb, what’s flying under the radar is the fact that the feds were supposed to fix this problem in 2016 via a law now on the books, but they haven’t, and they should,” Schumer said in a statement.

The FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 included language that asked the Secretary of Transportation to develop guidelines that would keep families together, but no action has been taken to date.

In a letter to current DOT Secretary Elaine Chao, Schumer asked her to start resolving the issue.

“With the holiday travel season upon us, I urge you to establish a policy to ensure that children 13 and under will not be seated apart from their parents on commercial aircraft,” Schumer wrote to Chao.

Citing an article from Consumer Reports, Schumer noted that there were 136 complaints filed against airlines for separating parents from children between March 2016 and November 2018. In seven of the cases, children as young as two were split up from their parents. In two cases, United Airlines broke up families traveling with 1-year-olds, the report found.

“Complaints numbering 136 are not a ‘low number,’ and even one instance of a young child being separated from their family on a commercial flight is unacceptable and quite frankly, disturbing,” Schumer wrote to Chao. “Airlines should have a responsibility to put families first over profits and fees, and the [DOT] must act now to come up with sensible guidelines.”