Frontier Airlines Becomes Latest Airline to Ensure Families Fly Together — What to Know

Frontier Airlines will automatically seat children next to a parent, becoming the latest airline to ensure families fly together.

The carrier announced Tuesday that its system will seat children under 14 years old with at least one parent or guardian. The seats will be automatically issued based on the family members’ age before check-in opens.

“We recognize the importance of seating children next to an adult with whom they are traveling,” Daniel Shurz, the senior vice president, commercial at Frontier Airlines, said in a statement. “Since last October, we have been doubling down on our efforts and further enhancing our system for ensuring a parent is seated with any children under the age of 14 in their family group. The system is working well and we are receiving positive feedback.”

Frontier is a low-cost airline and typically charges for extras like baggage and seat selection. The airline said customers will still have the option to choose their own seats for a fee.

The new family seating policy comes a day after United Airlines updated its own family seating approach, introducing a dynamic seat map that finds available adjacent seats at the time of booking to ensure children under 12 can sit next to an adult in their party for free.

Over the summer, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) called on U.S. airlines to stop charging families to sit together on flights.

Each airline has its own family seating policy. Delta Air Lines, for example, offers its own version of a dynamic seat map that blocks off certain rows in the main cabin so only groups of three or more people traveling together can book them. And in December, Southwest said it will start testing a new pilot program that will allow families with children to pre-board the plane first.

For its part, Breeze Airways touted its policy of always allowing adults traveling with children up to 12 years old to select seats for free in the airline’s designated “family section.”