I booked a Transavia flight Paris-Barcelona last week and I noticed that even standard seats now cost an extra 15-20€. Is this becoming standard across all budget airlines or is it just these companies? We used to at least get a few free seats, but now it's gotten completely crazy.
It's pretty much become the norm with almost all the budget airlines now 😅 Transavia, Ryanair, EasyJet... they all do the same thing, the "free" seats are basically just the spots in the back near the toilets or whatever. It's weird because technically you have to pay just to get a normal seat, but honestly everyone's gotten used to it, it's become the standard business model. If you really don't want to pay, check out the traditional airlines, but then you're just paying the difference somewhere else on the ticket 💸
Low-cost airlines have always charged for seats, it's nothing new in 2026 - the difference is just that now they're being more aggressive with the pricing. What changed is that before you could still grab a "standard" seat for free if you booked early enough, but now they've cut those quotas down to basically zero to force everyone to pay. It's not just Transavia, yeah, it's really become systematic everywhere, but honestly some airlines like EasyJet still leave a few seats without the extra charge if you hide the price by setting a specific filter on their site - you just gotta dig around a bit, it's worth it to save money.
It's the classic low-cost scam - they show you a rock-bottom price to reel you in, then they hit you with charges for every single option. At that point you might as well compare with regular airlines, sometimes the flight costs the same in the end but at least you get a decent seat included.
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