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The story
Pre-war LOT of the Second Republic
When the airline was founded in 1928, Poland's State Treasury held 86% of shares, with the rest belonging to the Province of Silesia and the city of Poznań. In the early 1930s, in addition to existing services from Warsaw to Kraków, Poznań, Gdańsk and Lviv, new services to Bydgoszcz and Katowice were introduced. It was also at this point, in 1931, when LOT's well-renowned logo, the "Flying Crane" (designed by the graphic artist Tadeusz Gronowski, and still in use today) was picked as the winning entry of the airline's logo design competition.
In the same year, the company's first multi-segment international flight along the route Warsaw – Lviv – Czerniowce – Bucharest was launched. In 1932, LOT began flying to Vilnius. In next years there followed services to Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, Budapest, including some waypoints. By 1939 the lines were extended to Beirut, Rome, Copenhagen, reaching 10,250 km (6,370 mi). The Douglas DC-2, Lockheed Model 10A Electra and Model 14H Super Electra joined the fleet in 1935, 1936 and 1938 respectively. (During this period, LOT had 10 Lockheed 10As, 10 Lockheed 14s, 3 DC-2s and 1 Ju 52/3mge). Several Polish aircraft designs were tested, but only the single-engined PWS-24 airliner was finally acquired. In 1934, after five years of operating under the LOT name, the airline received new head offices, technical facilities, hangars, workshops, and warehouses located at the new, modern Warsaw Okęcie Airport. This constituted a move from the airline's previous base at Pole Mokotowskie, as this airport had become impossible to operate safely due its gradual absorption into Warsaw's urban and residential areas.
In 1938, LOT changed its name, following that year's Polish spelling reform, from Polskie Linje Lotnicze 'LOT' to Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT'. That same year, a well-publicised transatlantic test flight from Los Angeles to Warsaw via Buenos Aires, Natal and Dakar, aimed at judging the feasibility of introducing passenger service on the Poland-United States route, was successfully executed. There were plans to introduce London and Moscow flights, and even a transatlantic service in 1940. The airline had carried 218,000 passengers before services were suspended due to the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939. Most of LOT's aircraft were subsequently evacuated to Romania, two to the Baltic states, and three L-14Hs to Great Britain. In 1939 LOT had 697 employees, including 25 pilots, most of which were evacuated along with the planes. The 13 airliners that got to Romania were seized by the Romanian government. For the duration of the Second World War, LOT's operations were suspended.
LOT during the Polish People's Republic
After the Soviet occupation of Poland, from August 1944 until December 1945, the Polish Air Force maintained basic transport in the country. From March 1945 there were regular routes maintained by Civil Aviation Department of the Air Force. On 10 March 1945 the Polish Government reintroduced LOT as a state-owned enterprise (Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT'), which would mainly fly Soviet-built aircraft, owing to the tensions of the Cold War and Poland being a member of the Warsaw Pact. In 1946, seven years after services were first suspended, the airline restarted its operations after receiving ten Soviet-built ex-Air Force Lisunov Li-2Ts, then further passenger Li-2Ps and nine Douglas C-47s. Both domestic and international services restarted that year, first to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm and Prague. In 1947 there were added routes to Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrad and Copenhagen.
Five modern, although troublesome SE.161 Languedocs joined the fleet for a short period in 1947–1948, followed by five Ilyushin Il-12Bs in 1949; 13–20 Ilyushin Il-14s then followed in 1955–1957. After the end of Stalinism in Poland, several Western aircraft would be acquired; five Convair 240s in 1957 and three Vickers Viscounts in 1962. These proved to be the last until the 1990s. After that, the composition of the airline's fleet shifted exclusively to Soviet-produced aircraft. Only in 1955 LOT inaugurated services to Moscow, being the centre of the Marxist–Leninist world, and to Vienna. Services to London and Zürich were not re-established until 1958, and to Rome until 1960.
Nine Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop airliners were introduced in June 1961, leading to the establishment of routes to Africa and the Middle East, and in 1963 LOT expanded its routes to serve Cairo. In the 1970s there were added lines to Baghdad, Beirut, Benghazi, Damascus and Tunis. The Antonov An-24 was delivered from April 1966 (20 used, on domestic routes), followed by the first jet airliners Tupolev Tu-134 in November 1968 (which coincided with the opening of a new international terminal at Warsaw's Okęcie Airport). The Tu-134s were operated on European routes. The Ilyushin Il-62 long-range jet airliner inaugurate the first transatlantic routes in the history of Polish air transport to Toronto in 1972 as a charter flight and a regular flight to New York City in 1973. LOT began service on its first Far East destination – Bangkok via Dubai and Bombay in 1977.
In 1977 the airline's current livery (despite occasional changes, notably in corporate typography) designed by Roman Duszek and Andrzej Zbrożek, with the large 'LOT' inscription in blue on the front fuselage, and a blue tailplane was introduced. However, despite livery changes over the years, the 1929-designed Tadeusz Gronowski logo, however, remains the same to this day.
In the autumn of 1981, commercial air traffic in Poland neared collapse in the wake of the communist government's crackdown on dissenters in the country after the rise of the banned Solidarity movement. During this period many Western airlines also suspended their flights to Warsaw. With the 13 December declaration of Martial Law, all LOT connections were suspended. Charter flights to New York and Chicago resumed only in 1984, and eventually, regular flight connections were restored on 28 April 1985. Tupolev Tu-154 mid-range airliners were acquired, after the withdrawal of Il-18 and Tu-134 aircraft from LOT's fleet in the 1980s, and were deployed successively on most European and Middle East routes. In 1986 transatlantic charter flights also reached Detroit and Los Angeles.
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By the end of 1989 LOT had hosted that year's IATA congress and reached a milestone annual load-factor of 2.3 million passengers carried over the year.
Post-1989 LOT Polish Airlines
After the fall of the communist system in Poland in 1989 the fleet shifted back to Western aircraft, beginning with acquisitions of the Boeing 767-200 in April 1989, followed by the Boeing 767-300 in March 1990, ATR 72 in August 1991, Boeing 737-500 in December 1992 and finally the Boeing 737-400 in April 1993. LOT was among the first Central European airlines to operate American aircraft. From the mid-1980s to early 1990s LOT flew from Warsaw to Chicago, Edmonton, Montreal, Newark, New York City and Toronto. These routes primarily served the large Polish communities (Polonia) in North America.
In 1990, LOT expanded its route network to include new international destinations such as Kyiv, Lviv, Minsk and Vilnius. In 1993, LOT began to expand its Western European operations, inaugurating, in quick succession, flights to Oslo, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf; operations at Poland's other regional airports outside Warsaw were also expanded around this time.
In 1994 the airline signed a codesharing agreement with American Airlines on flights to and from Warsaw as well as connecting flights in the United States and Poland operated by both companies; flights to Thessaloniki, Zagreb and Nice were inaugurated, and according to an IATA report, in this year LOT had the youngest fleet of any airline in the world. After years of planning, in 1997 LOT set up a sister airline, EuroLOT, which took over domestic flights. The airline was developed with the hope that it would increase transit passenger-flow through Warsaw's Chopin Airport, while at the same time providing capacity on routes with smaller load factors and play a part in developing LOT as the largest transit airline in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1999 LOT had purchased a number of small Embraer 145 regional jets in order to expand its short-haul fleet, and had, with the approval of the Minister of the State Treasury, begun a process of selling shares to the Swiss company SAirGroup Holding; this then led to the airline's incorporation into the Qualiflyer Group.
Expansion of LOT's route network continued in the early 2000s and the potential of the airline's hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport to become a major transit airport was realised. In 2000 LOT took delivery of its largest ever order of 11 aircraft, and by 2001 it carried a record 3 million customers in one year. This expansion led to the reconstruction of much of LOT's ground infrastructure, and by 2002 a new central Warsaw head office was opened. On 26 October 2003, after the collapse of the Qualiflyer Group, LOT became the 14th member of the Star Alliance. By 2006 a new base of operations, with the reconstruction of Warsaw Chopin Airport, had opened, thus allowing LOT's full transit airline potential to be developed for the first time. The new airport was much larger than any previous airport in Poland.
LOT created the low-cost carrier Centralwings in 2004; however, the company was dissolved and reincorporated into LOT after just five years of operations due to its long-term unprofitability and LOT's desire to redeploy aircraft within its own fleet.
2008–2019
In 2008, LOT opened a new flight to Beijing, but this lasted just one month, in the period before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The reason given by the airline for the discontinuation of the service was the need to route aircraft via an air corridor to the south of Kazakhstan (as LOT did not have permission for flights over Siberia from the Russian government), which was making the services too long and thus unprofitable.
LOT started new services to Yerevan and Beirut and resumed Tallinn, Kaliningrad, Gothenburg and Bratislava flights. with its newly acquired Embraer aircraft in the summer of 2010. In October of the same year LOT resumed service to Asia, with three weekly flights on the Warsaw – Hanoi route. In addition to this, new services to Tbilisi, Damascus, and Cairo were inaugurated.
In 2010 LOT cancelled flights, after 14 years of operation, between Kraków and Chicago and New York, citing profitability concerns and a lack of demand. The last US-Kraków flight departed on 27 October 2010 from Chicago O'Hare Airport. The aircraft previously used on this route were then re-deployed to serve LOT's Warsaw-Hanoi route. This route to Hanoi was largely underutilised by European carriers and proved very successful for LOT in the beginning.
On 31 May 2010, CEO of LOT Sebastian Mikosz said that the airline would be replacing its fleet to meet a goal of one-third new by 2011. Replacement already started with Embraer E-Jets 175/170. For domestic expanded operations, LOT purchased Dash 8-Q400 over ATR 72-600 aircraft.
On 5 February 2011, the new CEO of LOT, Marcin Piróg, announced that the airline was considering opening services to Baku, Sochi, Stuttgart, Oslo, Gothenburg, Dubai, Kuwait, and Ostrava from its Warsaw hub in the near future. Previously planned flights to Donetsk had already been inaugurated, as had Tokyo, and the resumption of Beijing flights. This became feasible after the finalizing of an agreement on Siberian overflight permits for LOT by the Polish and Russian governments in November 2011. As a result of the agreement, LOT received new take-off and landing slots at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport. Although delayed from the original plans, LOT began flights to Tokyo on 13 January 2016, with flights three times per week.
In 2010/11 LOT announced its new 'East meets West' route expansion policy, which saw the airline add several new Asian destinations to its schedule over the coming years. The policy aimed to take advantage of LOT's perspective as a transit airline and the substantial passenger growth seen on Europe-Asia flights in recent years. Also, in line with this policy LOT introduced premium economy class on all Boeing 787 aircraft. Additionally, lie-flat seats were made available in business class, and all of the airline's new long-haul aircraft were fitted with Thales personal entertainment systems.
In June 2012, LOT announced all services to New York would be centralized from Newark and JFK Terminal 4 to JFK Terminal 1 from October 2012. It would also enter into a codeshare agreement with JetBlue to increase the number of onward connections available to its customers. In July 2012 it was announced that a planned sale of a major stake in the airline to Turkish Airlines would not go ahead. The main problem was the inability of Turkish Airlines to own a majority stake as it is not a European Union company.
On 21 June 2015, 1,400 of the airline's passengers were affected as 22 of its flights were impacted after hackers attacked airline computers that were issuing flight plans at Warsaw's Okecie airport. LOT spokesman Adrian Kubicki said: "We're using state-of-the-art computer systems, so this could potentially be a threat to others in the industry."
Amidst a restructuring plan which saw the airline return to profitability for the first time in seven years, a 22 June 2015 press conference revealed details about the airline's prospects. These included reinstating routes renounced as part of EU sanctions imposed following Polish government aid granted to ensure the airline's survival, as well as new long haul routes to Asia and North America.
Air Lease Corporation confirmed on 13 October 2016, the placement of six Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft with LOT, and options to lease five further aircraft of the same type. Long haul plans saw the addition of further Boeing 787 aircraft, increasing the total to 16. The airline was evaluating the economics of future narrow body and wide body acquisitions to broaden expansion initiatives. The airline's CEO said that they were evaluating the Airbus A220 and Embraer E-Jet-E2 families, as well as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 XWB offerings.
In May 2018, LOT Polish Airlines started scheduled flights from outside Poland beginning with long-haul routes from Budapest to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City and O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. In May 2019, it started flying from Vilnius to London City airport, and from Tallinn to Brussels and Stockholm two months later. The latter two flights were suspended in early 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In December 2018, LOT was ranked the quietest among 50 airlines that regularly fly to Heathrow Airport in London. LOT spokesman Adrian Kubicki attributed the result to modern Boeing 737 MAX-8s with modern CFM International engines being used, and to the airline's pilots’ precise landing technique using the continuous descent approach (CDA) procedure.
Recent developments
On 24 January 2020, the owner of LOT, the Polish Aviation Group (Polska Grupa Lotnicza or PGL) announced that it would acquire Condor Flugdienst. On 2 April 2020 it was announced that the sale had fallen through, with the COVID-19 pandemic being a key factor.
The company temporarily suspended operations on 15 March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and domestic Polish flights restarted only on 1 June 2020, while international flights were resumed on a very limited basis from 1 July 2020. LOT Polish Airlines recorded a net loss of US$365.2 million in 2020, with a loss in sales of $138.1 million.
The airline posted a gross profit of $28 million for 2022, and a net profit of $276 million for 2023.
In February 2025, LOT announced it would end long-haul operations from Budapest, Hungary, from where it served a single route to Seoul by March 2025. This leaves all of their long-haul operations at Polish airports.
In June 2025, LOT received the title of the best airline in Eastern Europe according to the Skytrax ranking.
The company set a new all-time record by serving 1,185,946 passengers in a single month in July 2025.
In July 2025, LOT announced that it plans on resuming flights to Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine, within six weeks after a ceasefire and once Ukrainian airspace is declared safe. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, millions of Ukrainian refugees settled in Poland.
In December 2025, information surfaced that LOT was planning on merging with the Czech airline Smartwings. Ultimately, Smartwings was acquired by a Turkish charter airline, Pegasus Airlines.
From Wikipedia’s article on LOT Polish Airlines, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4