LONDON – Virgin Australia has now launched its first customer innovation, the Middle Seat Lottery, since recently announcing a new brand and advertising campaign, Bring on Wonderful, bolstering a 24-month transformation journey which returns the airline to profitability.
The airline recently announced its projected return to profitability by June 2023, and appears to be pushing forward strongly with its recently announced marketing 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.
That unpopular middle seat
The Middle Seat Lottery literally turns Virgin Australia middle seats into wonderful lottery tickets. The middle seat, which has always struggled for popularity, will be transformed into the luckiest seat on the plane with more than $230,000 worth of prizes up for grabs throughout the competition.
Virgin Australia say that guests who either select or who are assigned a middle seat when flying with Virgin Australia until Sunday 23 April 2023 will be eligible.
Through a social media survey in May 2022, Virgin Australia discovered that travellers are least likely to choose the middle seat, with less than 1 per cent intentionally selecting the middle seat as their first seat preference.
For each week of the competition, one winner will be randomly selected from guests who enter the Middle Seat Lottery, winning one of 26 unique and wonderful prizes. Prizes up-for-grabs include:
- Platinum Velocity Frequent Flyer Status plus one million Points.
- A cruise in the Caribbean with Virgin Voyages, including return Premium Economy flights to the USA with United Airlines.
- Flights and tickets to your AFL team’s away games in 2023.
- Flights to Melbourne plus entry to the AFL ‘Before the Bounce’ pre-game lunch, AFL Grand Final seats, a pre-game boundary line experience, merchandise and entry to the AFL Grand Final after party.
- A helicopter pub crawl extravaganza, including return flights to Darwin.
- Cairns adventure package including accommodation, return flights, and a range of thrilling adventures – Bungy jumping, giant swinging, river rafting or tubing in the great Barron River.
The full prize list can be viewed here.
Entering the competition
You can enter the airline’s Middle Seat Lottery in three easy steps:
- Be a Velocity Frequent Flyer member, aged 18 years or older;
- Fly in any middle seat on a Virgin Australia-operated domestic flight by Sunday 23 April 2023;
- Open the Virgin Australia app and tap the Middle Seat Lottery tile to find your flight and enter your details. Entrants must enter the competition within 48 hours of their flight’s scheduled departure time.
Winners will be contacted via email after each week’s draw. Those who aren’t already Velocity Frequent Flyer members are able to join free of charge, here.
Virgin Australia 24-month major transformation
The Bring on Wonderful campaign comes as Virgin Australia continues its ongoing business transformation, which plans to return the airline to profitability this financial year.
To date, the airline’s transformation journey has consisted of hundreds of projects since Virgin Australia was relaunched in November 2020.
The transformation program has enabled the airline to increase its fleet size by over 60 per cent, as well as hire thousands of new team members, refresh its catering offering, reimagine its brand and customer experience to provide more value and choice, forge significant partnerships, restructure its costs to enable great value airfares, commit to target net zero emissions by 2050 and more.
