Is Ryanair splitting up families who don't pay to sit together?

Low-cost airline Ryanair has been accused of deliberately splitting up passengers who refuse to pay extra to sit with their travel companions.

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Holidaymakers claim the carrier, which charges between £2 and £11 per person per flight for passengers to sit together, is placing travellers rows apart from each other, even on empty flights.

Passenger Kevin told MoneySavingExpert: "We got 12E and 29A. You now have no choice but to pay £7.50 if you want to sit beside each other. I think it's a despicable charge as they clearly could allocate late check-in seats together previously. Shame on you Ryanair."

Another traveller Fiona claimed: "I had two seats beside me free, and my husband was 10 rows behind and had a spare seat. I spoke to cabin crew as I noticed lots of people with the same problem. They said it is delaying the flight as they are trying to rearrange seats for people, especially children. This has been happening for two weeks."

A Ryanair spokesman denied that the airline is deliberately seating customers apart from their loved ones and told the Daily Mail: "Customers who do not wish to purchase a seat are randomly allocated a seat, free of charge. This has been our policy since the introduction of allocated seating in February 2014."