The middle seat, which has always struggled for popularity, is being transformed by Virgin Australia into the luckiest seat on the plane with more than A$230,000 worth of prizes up for grabs in a lottery for guests who either select or who are assigned a middle seat when flying with the airline.
The Middle Seat Lottery brand and advertising campaign ‘Bring on Wonderful’ “sets a foundation to elevate every part of the customer journey when flying with Virgin Australia, starting with the middle seat, which has been a bug bear for travellers since the dawn of aviation,” says the airline.
The contest, which runs through April 23, 2023, turns every middle seat into a lottery ticket. Each week, one winner will be randomly selected for one of the 26 prizes, which include trips such as Caribbean cruise, helicopter pub crawl in Darwin, Cairns adventure packages, bonus frequent flyers points, and more.
The airline says it discovered through a social media survey earlier this year that travellers are least likely to choose the middle seat, with less than 1% intentionally selecting the middle seat as their first seat preference. Amongst its Velocity Frequent Flyer members, 62% who nominated their seat preference favoured the aisle, 35% the window and just 3% nominating “any seat.”
To celebrate the launch of the Middle Seat Lottery, Virgin Australia Group CEO Jayne Hrdlicka surprised an entire flight of unsuspecting travellers flying on VA219 from Melbourne to Adelaide today on Oct. 24 with each guest seated in a middle seat receiving a Virgin Voyages sailing valued at up to US$5,999. Virgin Australia ensured no one went home empty-handed, offering each aisle and window seat passenger 10,000 Velocity Points.
Virgin Australia Group CEO Jayne Hrdlicka says the airline is on a mission to take flying “out of the mundane and into the wonderful.”
“Virgin Australia is an airline that’s doing things differently and we are having a lot of fun coming up with exciting new innovations to make every part of the travel experience more wonderful,” she says.