A frequent flier has revealed his hack for avoiding the dreaded middle seat, claiming that his unusual method has ‘never failed’. 

Jorden Tually, who shares his travel adventures on TikTok with over 3.6 million followers, shared a technique that he claims passengers can use to ensure they nab a window or aisle seat, without having to pay for it. In his video’s caption, he explains: “This travel hack has saved me from MANY a middle seat over the years. It’s actually never failed me and has a 100% perfect record when done correctly!”

Jordan starts his video claiming: “Did you know with budget airlines, if you click random seat allocation, they will intentionally put you in the middle seat in the hopes that you pay money to get out of it?”

While he doesn’t provide evidence that airlines automatically put you in the middle seat, Jordan goes on to give advice about how to avoid being put in this hated flying position, saying: “I’m not gonna pay 9 bucks for a freaking window seat.” He then looks at the seating plan for his upcoming flight and says: “The flight I’m about to check into still has a lot of middle seats available.So here is how I make sure I avoid them.”

“Upon checking, I saw there was still 10 middle seats available. I go straight to the website and pretend to buy 10 more middle seats. Now the website’s gonna ask for every passenger’s name, so just slam a bunch of letters in there and continue. Next up, go to seat selection and select all the middle seats or all the seats that you definitely do not want to be sitting in.Then click continue.” It’s important not to enter any payment information or go through to the payment stage.

Jordan explains that the airline’s website will then hold these seats for “10 to 15 minutes”, so during this window, you can then go onto the app and check in.

He said: “So when you go to check in with your authentic ticket, you can see that there’s no more middle seats.So click that random seat allocation button, dodge the rest of the scams on the website,and just like that, it only took me two minutes and now I have a window seat.”

Opinions in the comments were mixed, with some praising Jordan’s method, while others complained it was too much work to save a few pounds. One claimed: “Works every time!”, while another joked “instruction unclear now i hav 2 pay 30k on tickets”.

Others joked that exposing this trick might cause airlines to fix the loophole, with one commenter saying: “Just gonna wait here for Ryanair to comment.”

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