At last a European carrier gets their turn. LOT Polish Airlines has announced that the carrier’s inaugural Boeing 787 service from Warsaw to Chicago will be on January 16, 2013. This will be followed closely by Warsaw to Toronto on February 1 and to New York JFK on February 3. LOT Polish Airlines will launch Boeing 787 service to Beijing a month later, on March 3.
LOT is offering 252 seats all with individual entertainment in three classes of service on the new aircraft. This compares with JAL’s 186 seats, ANA’s 216, United with 219 and Ethiopian’s 270 seats.
Elite Club (business class) at the front of the craft with 18 lie flat seats arranged 2/2/2
Premium Club (premium economy) behind Elite will have 21 seats arranged in three rows of 2/3/2
Economy Class crams 213 seats into a 3/3/3 arrangement.
LOT was established by the Polish Government on 1 January 1929 and is now 68 per cent government owned. There were recent talks with Turkish Airlines to buy a majority stake in LOT but these failed to materialise. The airline has not operated continuously since its founding. Services were suspended from 1939 to 1946. With all of LOT’s planes destroyed or confiscated in Romania, the communist government had to re-found the carrier in the post war period. They again suspended services between 1981 and 1985. Its Crane logo, however, has been maintained since being designed in 1929. For the 787, LOT has undertaken an image refresh.
LOT is a member of the Star Alliance and is rated by Skytrax as a three star airline. Their 55 planes connect 60 destinations in Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Asia. I have yet to fly them.
Check out the LOT Polish Airlines 787 site here. NB It is in Polish.
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