For nearly a year, LOT Polish Airlines has been renovating one of its primary lounges at Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW). There’s now a positive update, as this lounge has reopened, and it looks like a huge improvement over the old space.
Continue reading: LOT Polish Airlines Lounge Warsaw Expanded, Renovated
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The Gold section is also available to LO long-haul Business Class class without the Gold card.
On departure, but also on arrival if connecting onward 🙂
@ Aaron -- It's on my list, but don't have any firm itinerary yet. I fly out of ORD T5 more than I'd like, so I'm sure it'll happen sooner rather than later. 🙂
What really doesn’t make sense is why lot uses miles and more -a program totally unsuited to their operation and customer base. They are missing out on revenue and opportunities by not having their own ffp.
There are many sources confirming that LOT was looking into switching alliance multiple times in the recent decade. Somehow they always decided against it (or the alternative alliance refused to accept them). It's a pity because LOT has a lot of potential and oneworld could really use a massive improvement of its European network (which as things are is basically useless).
Interesting! I’m flying LOT for the first time later this month! Will def give this lounge (and maybe the $78 Volvo ride if at a remote stand) a try!
ill be arriving on a Finnair flight and then connecting onto a LO flight to YYZ in business. Anyone with knowledge of the airport know whether I can access this lounge? Is there a decent alternative in non ex-Schengen zone, if not?
“Mazurek” is the LO lounge in the non-Schengen zone - it’s decent but gets crowded when LOT has a couple of TATL departures around the same time (JFK, EWR, ORD, YYZ…).
You can go to Polonez first and then make your way to the non-Schengen gates closer to your flight. It’s a small airport and short walk. If you have an EU passport, you can use e-gates.
This is the real issue here. TK, Aegean, and even TAP are doing absolutely fine within *A, even as they often compete on various routes/city pairs against LH and other alliance members. LOT is both big enough as an airline and based in a country with a largish and growing economy, using a competitor's loyalty scheme is such a huge missed opportunity.
Why would LOT's potential be undermined by its membership of the world's biggest and most wide-reaching alliance?
After Project Sunrise brings flights from Sydney to Katowice, all the African members of oneworld will start flying to WAW and replace the ET feed, while the South American ones will definitely want to establish codeshares to bring tourists to KRK during the winter in the southern hemisphere. And DFW would be so much better than ORD as a principal N. American gateway- after all, what's the point of flying a route from Warsaw to Chicago which only has 800k residents of Polish descent?
As for the e-gates, last time (2 months ago) I connected at WAW, none of the e-gates were working. There was one border guard for all passengers, business and economy, and the guard always let flight crews ahead of everyone else. He took several minutes to check everyone's passport, even the LOT crew. I was the second in line, and still took me 30 min to get through.
After my wife and I got IDB'ed flying business class, and having to spend my birthday in the Mazurek lounge, LOT is way off my list of airlines to fly.
If that's a "huge improvement" I'd hate to see the old lounge. Yikes!
I can't see it standing up to the test of time, and expect to see it looking pretty shabby in a couple of years.
The quality of the refurbishment is very poor. Panels coming off the doors because they’re not affixed properly, tables already scratched, lamp fell off the wall, several machines for steaming clothes broken. Pellegrino water eliminated.
There was a spa for years with the previous company Yonelle. I think they fired the employee who worked there for a long time to replace it with this Phenome.
My (realistic) alliance plan for Europe :
BA / IB / AY : stay in OW
AF / KL / UX / RO / SK : stay in SkyTeam
LH / OS / LX / SN / TP / OU / TK : stay in Star Alliance
AZ and LO move to SkyTeam.
A3 can move either to SkyTeam (or OW). Star doesn't need Aegean since they already have TK which is huge as well as OU in the region.
EI rejoins OW.
JU is the perfect Eastern European partner for OW since losing MA in 2012. Maybe Bulgaria Air can join Oneworld too.
BT joins Star due to its location, fill in the gap from the airlines leaving it, and the Lufthansa-owned share.
AZ merges with LO since they're both in Star Alliance and are being mistreated by Lufthansa. Lufthansa will not be able to manage Rome profitably and will sell Alitalia back. And yes, by then ITA will not exist and have rebranded back to Alitalia and finally as it should the hub will be brought back to Milan Malpensa with potential for a CDG-style mega hub. This is a possibility.
So after this, the alliances are more balanced.
OW : BA, IB, AY, EI, JU, FB(?)
Sky : AF, KL, AZ, LO, SK, UX, RO, A3
Star : LH, OS, LX, SN, TP, OU, BT, TK