In a move that would have made Nero pause mid-fiddle, Ryanair has bowed to pressure from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and reversed its policy of charging parents for seating next to their children. The airline, long a bastion of libertarian spite dressed in low-cost drag, has finally acknowledged what any civilised society knows: that forcing a mother to pay extra to sit beside her toddler is not entrepreneurial spirit, but a shakedown. The CMA's intervention is a rare victory for common decency, and one is reminded of the Victorian factory acts, which similarly curbed the exploitation of the vulnerable by grasping industrialists.
Ryanair's argument that seating allocation is a 'cosmetic extra' always reeked of the sophistry that gave us the Fall of Rome: a culture that mistakes profit for virtue. Yet here we are, in 2023, still debating whether a parent ought to be separated from their child for the sake of a few quid. The airline's concession is welcome, but the fact that it required regulatory pressure is a sign of intellectual decadence in our commercial class.
We have created a world where the very people we trust to carry our families through the sky must be shamed into basic humanity. It is a sad mirror of the late Roman Empire, where the mobs were pacified with bread and circuses, while the elite pocketed the corn dole. Today, we are pacified with cheap flights, while the airlines nickel-and-dime us for oxygen.
Ryanair's U-turn is a small step back from the abyss, but it does not absolve them of the indictment that they ever thought this was acceptable. The national identity of a country is reflected in how it treats its children; Britain, through its watchdog, has said that we will not be a nation that sells seats to mothers as if they were commodities. One can only hope that other airlines, watching from the wings, will learn the lesson without needing the CMA's boot on their neck.
For now, a minor celebration: decency has won a skirmish. But the war for a humane society continues.
