A boy was left in floods of tears when a passenger refused to move out of his seat after Ryanair double booked it.
Ryan Bandli spent the flight back to the UK anxious and upset at not being able to sit by the window seat, which helps the six-year-old keep calm, with the airline blaming the issue on an IT glitch.
His mum Adi had forked out to reserve a specific spot on a plane run by the budget airline's subsidiary Buzz, only to find a woman sitting in it when they boarded the plane in Budapest, Hungary.
She showed them her identical seat reservation and refused to move, prompting the flight attendants to usher Ryan to an aisle seat.
Adi, who said her son is "very reactive" and struggles in stressful situations, said she the flight attendant had "begged them" to give their reserve seat up.
Ryanair has said the seat was not sold twice, but that the issue came about because of a "computer glitch", and has now refunded Adi the reservation cost.
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"Ryan was really upset and anxious and he cried," Adi told The Mirror. "He didn't understand how this could happen. We sat separately and it was really stressful."
She added: "How can something like this happen?"
The seat debacle took place at the end of August when Adi, Ryan and his dad were flying into Manchester Airport, to get home to Stoke-on-Trent.
Knowing how nervous flying made Ryan, Adi forked out for three different seat reservations to ensure that they'd all be sitting together.
Failure to pay for a specific seat on a Ryanair flight - which typically cost between £15 and £30 - means you generally end up separated from your party and in the middle seat.
"Ryan likes to sit next to the window," Adi explained. "It calms him down a bit and he likes to lean his head against the wall."
While the discovery of someone else in your seat may be little more than an inconvenience for some, for Ryan it was very stressful.
"My poor child was crying. People gave him sweets and were so kind," Adi said.
Since landing Adi has been pushing Ryanair for an explanation and compensation. She claims the airline rejected the request and told her that the seat was given to someone else as it was by an emergency exit.
"The CAA requires that UK airlines have procedures to ensure that customers are seated where, in the event that an emergency evacuation is required, they may best assist and not hinder evacuation from the aeroplane," a Ryanair employee wrote to Adi.
"Only those customers who appear reasonably fit, strong and able to assist the rapid evacuation of the aeroplane in an emergency should be allocated seats that permit direct access to emergency exits."
Under the rules, child are not considered suitable passengers to sit by the exit. Adi says they were not sat in an emergency exit row.
She has also questioned why they were able to book seats in the first place, and why they weren't allocated a row with a window seat elsewhere.
Referring to the company's Polish subsidiary, a spokesperson for Ryanair said: "This Buzz passenger’s seat was not sold twice; this misunderstanding was as a result of an isolated IT glitch. Unfortunately as the flight was fully booked, there were no other window seats available.
"Buzz regrets the inconvenience caused to Ms. Bandli and her son and a member of our customer services team will contact them directly."
