Middle Seat Surprise: Virgin Australia Extends Lottery with Bigger Prizes

Virgin Australia, the country’s second-largest airline, is expanding its Middle Seat Lottery in response to rising demand. Originally scheduled to end on 23rd April the offer to encourage more travellers to choose a middle seat will now last through Sunday, 9th July 2023.

Less than 1% of passengers purposefully choose the middle seat, according to Virgin Australia (VA), whose study led to the announcement of the Middle Seat Lottery in October of last year. According to the study, 62% of Velocity Frequent Flyer members preferred the aisle, 35% preferred the window, and 3% had no preference.

Chief marketing officer for Virgin Australia Group, Libby Minogue, stated: “We are laser focused on elevating the Virgin Australia travel experience at every part of the journey and the Middle seat Lottery is a great example of that.” Libby Minogue continues, “We know the middle seat is a bug bear for travellers globally which is why the competition has been so popular. We have literally had hundreds of thousands of entries over the past six months and we are really proud to extend the competition with an additional prize pool valued at over [AU] $45,000 ($30,000).”

According to Minogue, the perception of being crammed into a middle seat has changed, and some passengers are now preferring to sit in the centre on purpose, demonstrating how effective the advertising for VA has been.

More than 240,000 VA travellers have entered the contest since it began in October, including goat farmers Nick and Lauren Jackson of New South Wales, who won a Virgin Voyages Caribbean cruise. Lauren opted to fill out the submission while the newlyweds were on their VA honeymoon flight, winning them the cruise and round-trip tickets to Miami.