If you ask me a week ago, flying LOT Polish Airlines is definitely not in my agenda. However, after returning to my hotel room after the Swiss’ CS100 inaugural, I saw a military coup in Turkey, so I immediately got into action in finding a flight home. Knowing the situation at Turkey, TK can’t be really running normally, but I need to be home. So I decide to seek an alternative. Iceland Air business class is the cheapest, but I did not manage to buy the ticket before midnight. So I ended up finding a somehow affordable one-way ticket from Zurich to JFK via Warsaw on LX in the first leg, and then LOT business class in the second leg. I have read a few LOT Polish airlines’ business class so my expectation is reasonable. For the price I paid for a literally less than 1 day advance purchase, LOT does the job, and obviously there is much room for improvement, especially if it wants to climb up to the top tier level. For a mid-tier European airline, it is a good airline. Everyone except the immigration officers are friendly and polite.
Full album link:
http://s1213.photobucket.com/user/Ca...AWJFK07162016J
July 16, 2016
LO 26 WAW-JFK Lv1725 Arr2030 Boeing 787-8 SP-LRD
Booking:
I used a third party website obviously, as LOT Polish airlines actually has a much higher fare for the same flight and it does not allow me to take a later flight with a shorter connection. But once the third party website provides me with the reservation numbers, I am able to select seats on LOT website, and as you can imagine, there are not many choices left. They also recognized my Star Gold status and I am convinced that that’s the reason why I was the only one with two seats to myself. I picked 1E because 1F was blocked, so I guess my risk paid off. But I rate LOT’s website with high marks.
Check-in:
I checked in with Swiss at Zurich and the business class was busy, but not much waits. The friendly agent checked me all the way through to JFK, and even printed out my onward boarding pass to JFK. Star Alliance actually works seamlessly. I am not going to write much about the Helvetic Airlines’ Fokker 100 flight, except I appreciate the nice legroom on the front sections of the plane but those smaller overhead bins are issues. I also like the hot meals served, which I did not expect. Here are the pictures of the Chicken Schnitzel lunch served on my flight. Dessert was the same as my previous CS 100 flight.
Planespotting:
Transit:
Transit at Warsaw was easy and please note that the real LOT Polish Airlines lounge is before immigration. So don’t go through immigration first if you want to go to the lounge. Or else you will have to visit the more generic joint lounge, Bolero lounge.
Entrance to the lounge
Lot names its business class lounge Polonez, and then the lounge is pretty decently sized. It got busier as the day proceeds. My favorite part of the lounge is these designer swinging lounge chairs.
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