Ryanair has announced that as of September 1st it will be mandatory for adults travelling with children under 12 to pay for reserved seats - but the Irish airline will also introduce free reserved seats for travelers under 12.

One adult travelling with each child, or group of children, will be required to reserve a seat. The airline will offer a special reduced fare of €4 to book these seats.

The company says that as more passengers avail of the option to pre-book seats and its load factor (percentage of available seats sold) remained high at 94% there have been increasing instances of parents and young children being separated on its flights after being randomly allocated seats.

"This caused boarding issues as crews tried to re-seat customers with young children. Ryanair’s crews cannot move customers who have already paid for their preferred seats simply to accommodate other customers who are travelling with young children," the airline said in a statement.

Ryanair’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kenny Jacobs added: "Ryanair is Europe’s number one airline for families and this summer all customers are enjoying fares that are 10% lower than last year. That’s a €4 saving on every flight and these changes will allow parents to save another €4 for every one of their children travelling together."

Expansion

Earlier in this week Ryanair reported profit growth of 4% for the first quarter of its financial year.

Profits after tax climbed to €256m - earnings per share increased by 12% to 20.01 cent.

Revenue for the three months to the end of June grew 2% when compared to the same period in 2015, from €1.65bn to €1.69bn.

The low fares airline carried 31.2 million passengers during its first quarter, up 11% on the same period last year.

CEO Michael O'Leary said that the company was maintaining its guidance that full year profits would rise by approximately 12%, while cautioning that the UK's Brexit decision would pose significant risks for the rest of 2016.