Everybody hates sitting in the middle seat when flying, invariably hemmed in either side by two burly types. Virgin Australia is now encouraging people to choose these seats, with their new Middle Seat Lottery.

They are giving away A$230,000 in prizes (US$146,915, €147,533 or £128,108) between now and 23 April 2023. That means you really should select one of these seats during the competition period.

Middle Seat Lottery

According to the Aussie airline’s press release, less than 1% of people actively choose a middle seat. This is not surprising, as even I have written before about a trick on how to maximise your chances of keeping this seat free when travelling as a pair.

You need to be a member of the Velocity frequent flyer programme to be eligible to compete, then you enter via the app. It all sounds simple enough and there is one winner announced each week.


Happily, the 26 weekly prizes seem pretty cool as well. The first one is being awarded Platinum frequent flyer status and one million points. Since it’s an airline, this is perhaps the most obvious one, and a pretty decent one at that.

There are also things like a Caribbean cruise, a helicopter pub crawl (which sounds rather unique!) and more. They seem to be genuinely excellent prices, which I think is great.

Overall Thoughts

I’ll be curious to see how many people switch from their usual seats for the period the Middle Seat Lottery is happening. I know I certainly would, as you may as well be in with a chance to win. These unloved seats might even sell out now.

This is one of the most unusual airline promotions I’ve ever come across. Hopefully it will be a great success – it’s certainly on brand for Virgin Australia, that’s for sure.

What do you think of this Middle Seat Lottery? Would you enter it? Have you seen any other unusual airline promotions before? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

Like planes? See my “Does anyone remember” series.
Flight reviews your thing? Mine are all indexed here.
Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Featured image by Mehdi Nazarinia on Airliners.net via Wikimedia Commons.