LOT

For three years in a row, LOT Polish Airlines have been awarded the title of "Best Airline in Eastern Europe" by Business Traveller magazine. I have checked my boarding passes again, and yes this is the same crappy airline I have flown around 40 times throughout the last years (because I didn't have much of a choice) and which, again around 40 times, I have found to be offering a product and service far below the quality of other European airlines, including most Eastern European ones.

Before I let you into my disastrous experiences with LOT, I have to ask how such titles are awarded by Business Traveller and likewise journals.

At the turn of every year Business Traveller, a UK frequent flyer journal, asks its readers to complete a survey embracing everything from airlines and frequent flyer programmes to luxury hotels and car rental agencies. The survey is split into endless categories by product and region, e.g. for hotels you can vote for best hotel on every continent, best hotel worldwide, best hotel chain, etc.

The problem is that unlike here at Ciao, you must vote for products you have never used, because every field has to be filled in. Best hotel in Southeast Asia? I don't have a clue, I have never been there. But the Oriental Hotel and the Siam Inter-Continental, both in Bangkok, enjoy excellent reputation. So one year I will fill in the Oriental, next year the Siam, if I still remember which one I had chosen the year before.

Thus it must be same way with LOT. All these wannabe frequent flyers who read Business Traveller in airline lounges and hotel lobbies, but have never been to Eastern Europe, let alone flown with LOT. "They won the title last year so they must be good" says the uninitiated and votes for LOT as Best Airline in Eastern Europe, starting just another round in the self-repetitive cycle of backslapping.

As I have done before with British European Airlines / formerly Jersey European (see one of my early ops), I am writing this review to put a few things right about an airline that is not only often wrongly perceived in public, but also, I am afraid, misrepresented on Ciao with two uninformed opinions published so far.

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOT POLISH AIRLINES
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1. THE FACTS
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NETWORK & FLEET

LOT flies to around forty European cities, around ten cities in Poland, and a handful of long distance destinations, mostly in North America. Most flights operate on a hub and spoke system to and from Warsaw, although there are some decentralised routes within Poland and a dozen international flights from other Polish cities, including intercontinental flights from Krakow to New York and Tel Aviv.

The fleet is built around Boeing's 737 workhorses, longhaul flights are operated with Boeing 767s. Short commuter flights are served with ATR turboprops, and more recently, Embraer Regional Jets have been introduced.

In Spring 2000 the Swiss SAir Group acquired a 25% share in LOT Polish Airways subsequently joined the Qualiflyer Alliance of a dozen European airlines, including Swissair, Sabena and TAP Air Portugal. LOT has since been introducing a lot of new routes linking Warsaw with the other hubs of the Qualiflyer Group. There have also been a range of timetable adaptations to turn Warsaw into a hub itself, for connections to central and eastern Europe. As a result of LOT joining this alliance, miles can now be collected and spent on all LOT flights with the Qualiflyer Programme, on of the most attractive frequent flyer programmes worldwide.

INFLIGHT SERVICE

Seating onboard LOT aircraft is narrow and rather uncomfortable, both in Business and Economy Class. The seat configuration is 3 - 3 on the Boeing 737, 2 - 2 on the ATR turboprops, and 1 - 2 on the regional jets, and that's the same for both classes. The turboprop flights are particularly dreadful, because LOT employs the noisy first generation ATRs 42 and 72, and has fitted them with extremely narrow, scratch seats.

Not much better is sitting on a middle seat when you've booked a full fare business class ticket and expect a just a little bit of extra comfort. Slightly more comfortable are the flights on the 50 seats regional jets. These operate on routes with little traffic. And because LOT serves many of these regional routes in competition to such established airlines as Lufthansa, there are usually few people onboard, which gives you some extra space.

I will get to the meals further below. I have listed them as a separate item under my personal dreadful experiences with LOT. There is also no inflight entertainment on shorthaul flights at all, neither audio and video, and the newspapers on offer are rather limited. But, due to Warsaw's central location in eastern Europe, LOT flights usually don't last longer than one and a half hours, so that's just bearable.

On the whole, LOT's inflight service hardly meets charter flights standards, let alone the quality provided by most other Qualiflyer airlines and the competition. With a view to LOT's image as eastern Europe's best airline, they can hardly compete with the much better equipped Czech Airlines (see one of my first ops).

PRICE

At least they are cheap. Although they can't beat the dumping prices offered by CSA Czech Airlines and MALEV Hungarian Airlines for both business and economy tickets, they are far cheaper than western airlines and often provide the best combination of timetable and price. (As I explained in my op about CSA, their bargain offers are often useless due to lack of connections).

LOT offers Business Specials basically throughout its complete network, and these are usually 30% to 40% cheaper than the official IATA Business Fares. Thus LOT beats the Business Specials which are available on the selected routes from Lufthansa, Austrian and Scandinavian by another 10% to 20%. Economy Specials are also available and particularly cheap on newly opened routes, but you will often find same price tickets from other, better airlines, although that may result in a stopover in Frankfurt, Zurich or Vienna.

If your employer, like my last company and many others, has travel guidelines sanctioning you to fly on the cheapest Business Class ticket available on a reasonable timetable, than you are almost sure to fly LOT on flights to Poland and many other destinations in eastern Europe. That's good for your company's travel expenses, but bad for you, as I will explain with some examples of my personal experiences with the Polish carrier.

2. MY EXPERIENCES
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DREADFUL FOOD

As I've said before, I have flown with LOT around forty times on five different routes (Warsaw to Berlin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Vienna, and Krakow to Frankfurt) and, believe me, the food was ALWAYS EXACTLY THE SAME! Not a single change in the menu in two years. That would just be bearable if at least this one meal was good. But unfortunately it is not.

In Business Class you receive a small plate with what I believe to be some kind of cold goose paté, served with a Polish jam as a topping. A bit of lettuce on the side and a cold, soft roll, that's it. The Economy meal consists of two rolls, one with ham and one with cheese, one slice each. After ten flights you just can't see it anymore and opt for a no frills flight. Even the food on Polish overland trains is far better. The only thing that lets you endure the flight is a Bloody Mary with Polish Vodka.

FRAUDULENT PRACTICE

LOT collects twice on some tickets and will never reimburse you the overpaid amount unless you threaten them with legal action. How does that work. Say you are booking a LOT flight through your corporate travel agent in London. Once arrived in Warsaw you decide to stay a day longer and thus need to have your ticket changed. So you call your travel agent, rebook, your agent confirms the change and might even forward a fax to you with a change of booking certified by LOT's UK office, paid through your corporate account with the agent (if ticket restrictions require a surcharge, as with most Business Specials and Economy fares).

Upon your check-in at Warsaw airport, LOT for sure won't know anything about the change, let alone the payment. You may even show them the fax from their very own office, and they will still insist that the change of booking and payment are not registered in the system (Soviet made?), and will require you to pay again on the spot. If you refuse to do so, they simply won't let you on the flight. Full stop. You can ask for the supervisor, the station manager or the pope himself, they won't change their minds. This has happened to me three times and has resulted in a change of our travel guidelines, allowing me to travel with other airlines at higher prices.

All you can do later is to hand in the receipt to your bookkeeping, hoping they will pay again for something they have already paid for. Or bombard them with letters hoping that after half a year they will react and reimburse you, only after you've already checked the Warsaw Yellow Pages for a good Polish lawyer.

TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE

LOT's ground service in Poland is disastrous. If you are departing from Warsaw and need to deal with the local ticket office, then God help you! Whilst your fellow passengers check in, pass through passport control, board the plane and wave at the spectators on the visitors terrace from the plan which already rolls on the taxi way, you are still cueing in front of an understaffed ticket counter, with no express desk for business class passengers.

On one of these occasion last autumn, cueing for half an hour just to spend another half an hour watching an absolutely clueless lady try changing my ticket, with of course no change or payment registered in the system, I got just a little bit annoyed. Outrage would be the correct word I think, as I went through the usual procedure: asking for the supervisor, the station manager, and ultimately for the pope. I got extremely angry and let them know that every post soviet carrier in the deserts of Kasachstan would handle things better - and then received a very eloquent reply: F*CK YOU!

This put a sudden end to my relationship with LOT Polish Airlines. I returned my ticket, bought a new one from Lufthansa, embarked on a pleasant flight to Düsseldorf, and have never again flown with LOT since.

This is particularly disappointing because I have generally come to appreciate the high service standards of other Polish firms. Poland in general has established a friendly business environment. But LOT Polish Airlines, although now partially privatised, still prefers to run on a communist mentality in some service areas.

As a matter of fairness I should mention that things get a lot better when you depart with LOT from international airports. Most of LOT's ground service outside Poland is operated by Swissair, providing for a speedy and competent processing.

© 2001 Hansjörg Gebel, Witten, Germany