Some of us think you're just being cheap.
I solved the problem by preferring southwest, but their new CEO is an a*hole, and instead of raising ticket prices $50 a seat is adding assigned seating, removing legroom, charging for bags, adding ticket change fees, etc, etc.
Citation needed. These things happen, and the airline has some responsibility. But there's plenty of "playing dumb". Cabin crew: "You have a basic economy seat, which means you didn't get seat selection". "I didn't know!" "There's a big blue warning that pops up when you do this with a child passenger, making you acknowledge it..." "..."
Also, screw airlines that create a financial incentive to make everyone else on the plane miserable.
The last time I flew Alaska, their seating algorithm needlessly separated parties, then jammed everyone into crowded, no legroom aisles, while leaving the comfortable seats empty.
I know it was intentionally splitting parties because I was flying solo and ended up with a center seat. The person next to me was separated from someone that the airline put in a center seat. A naive greedy algorithm would have swapped me and their companion.
They wanted something like $80 for non-malicious seating assignments.
They even made the flight attendant lie and claim was a safety issue, and the plane would fall out of the sky if people switched rows or were evenly distributed throughout the plane. Presumably, management did this so they could charge you with ignoring safety instructions, which is a crime.
Wait, why is nobody having kids?
The world has more than enough people, so we shouldn't be subsidizing having children. Imbalanced demographics can be solved in other ways.
Tough luck then buddy. Have fun with the kids.
There has to be some kind of middle ground here, imo. Nobody wants to sit next to kids. Families don't want to be penalized financially anymore than they already are for providing a benefit to society. We don't need to further disincentivize families and further our declining birth rates. At the same time it's wildly unfair to ask people to switch seats when they've paid for them (or even if they haven't).
You made choices, if you were informed about the costs that's kind of on you.
I don't understand the objection to a middle ground approach here, but if that's what we want then screw it.