LOT Polish Airlines, legally Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT S.A. (, flight), is the flag carrier of Poland. A founding member of IATA, it is one of the world's oldest airlines still in operation. With a fleet of 90 aircraft as of February 2026, LOT is Europe's 22nd largest operator by the total number of passengers scheduled, serving 97 destinations across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The airline was founded on 29 December 1928 by the Polish government during the Second Polish Republic as a self-governing limited liability corporation, taking over existing domestic airlines Aerolot (founded in 1922) and Aero (founded in 1925). LOT officially commenced operations on 1 January 1929.
In the 1930s, LOT expanded its domestic and international routes, leading to a network spanning over 10,250km by 1939. It also expanded its fleet, acquiring Douglas DC-2 and Lockheed Electra aircraft, amongst others. The airline moved its operations to the new Warsaw OkÃÂcie Airport (now Warsaw Chopin Airport) in 1934. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939, led to the suspension of services and the evacuation of most of LOT's aircraft. Post-war, LOT was reestablished in 1945 as a state enterprise, primarily operating Soviet aircraft due to Poland's reemergence as communist state in 1948. Resuming both domestic and international flights, LOT operated a fleet consisting of Ilyushin Il-18, Ilyushin Il-62, Tupolev Tu-134 and Antonov An-24 aircraft. LOT served routes across Europe, the Middle East, and eventually launched transatlantic flights in the early 1970s.
In the post-1989 era, LOT transitioned to Western aircraft, such as the Boeing 737 and the Boeing 767. The airline joined the Star Alliance in 2003. In 2012, LOT became the first European operator of Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Most of LOT's destinations originate from its hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport.
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 Poznaà Â. In the early 1930s, in addition to existing services from Warsaw to Kraków, Poznaà Â, Gdaà Âsk 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 â Lviv â Czerniowce â 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 . 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 OkÃÂcie 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.
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 (PrzedsiÃÂbiorstwo Paà Âstwowe 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 1947âÂÂ1948, followed by five Ilyushin Il-12Bs in 1949; 13âÂÂ20 Ilyushin Il-14s then followed in 1955âÂÂ1957. 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 MarxistâÂÂLeninist 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 OkÃÂcie 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 â 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 Zbroà ¼ek, 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.
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.
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.
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 â 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 pilotsâ precise landing technique using the continuous descent approach (CDA) procedure.
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.
LOT is wholly owned by Polish Aviation Group (Polish: Polska Grupa Lotnicza S. A.), a state-owned holding company.
In 2011, LOT was considered for privatisation. Although advanced discussions were held with Turkish Airlines, no agreement was reached.. This was largely due to restrictions preventing non-EU carriers from acquiring a majority stake in an EU airline.
LOT Polish Airlines serves a network of European destinations in addition to flights to Asia, the Middle East, northern Africa and North America.
LOT Polish Airlines has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
, LOT Polish Airlines utilises the following aircraft:
With the delivery of new Boeing 787 aircraft between 2011 and 2012, LOT introduced a new livery. This design was intended to retain the tradition and spirit of LOT with no major or radical changes. The blue nose and broad cheat-line were removed; the 'POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE' titles on each aircraft's starboard side were replaced with the words 'POLISH AIRLINES'. The tailplane's design was altered minimally, with the colours of the traditional encircled crane logo being inverted and the circle becoming a simpler outline ring.
Several Embraer aircraft have worn special advertising liveries. One Embraer E175, SP-LIM, was repainted as a retrojet, into LOT's 1945 livery, for the airline's 90th anniversary.
Airliners featured all-natural metal silvery color, with a black crane logo on the tail, and a small black inscription: POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE âÂÂLOT" under or above the window line. Before 1939, there was also a rounded inscription: LOT above passenger doors (apart from the Ju 52, which also differed in having black engine covers and nacelles).
After World War II, the aircraft mostly wore a similar all-natural metal scheme, with the airline name above the window line. In the late 1940s, the Polish white and red flag was added on a rudder. From the early 1950s, a thin blue cheatline was introduced below the window line, starting with a stylized bird in front. Some aircraft flew in military schemes (green and light blue or olive drab and grey).
This livery featured blue mid-level broad cheatline on the window line, with the fuselage a white colour above the cheatline and unpainted below. Early versions of this livery also featured thin blue stripes above and below the cheatline and a white tail, with small black crane logo on the fin and medium-size Polish flag on the rudder. Above the cheatline there was black inscription in italics: POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE ûLOTë. There was also a long black stylized crane below the cockpit on most aircraft. In the early 1960s, the scheme was modernized and featured the blue cheatline without upper and lower stripes, and a blue tail fin and rudder. The Polish flag was much larger on the tail, while the crane logo was above the flag, on a white circle. There was also another Polish flag on the cheatline, behind the cockpit. On Il-18s and Il-62s, the cheatline was narrower, below the window line.
LOT's iconic livery was introduced in 1977 and has undergone no major changes. The livery is essentially a predominantly white scheme with elements of traditional aviation design incorporated. The latter elements were visible in the design of the LOT livery as an area of dark blue under the cockpit windscreen, the long cheat-line painted down the side of the fuselage and the large traditional logo which is emblazoned on the tailplane.
Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft were named after famous Poles, with the first named Mikoà Âaj Kopernik. The five Boeing 767s LOT ordered from Boeing were named after Polish cities. This practice, however, was discontinued with the arrival of Boeing 787s and the introduction of the airline's new livery. Only LOT's sixth 787, SP-LRF, was named 'Franek' after an online vote organised by the airline.
LOT uses Lufthansa Group's Miles & More frequent-flyer program. Miles & More members can earn miles on LOT flights and Star Alliance partner flights, as well as through LOT credit cards and purchases made through LOT Polish Airlines shops. Status within Miles & More is determined by miles flown during one calendar year with specific partners. Membership levels include Basic (no minimal threshold), Frequent Traveller (Silver, 35,000-mile threshold), Senator (Gold, 100,000-mile threshold), and HON Circle (Black, 600,000-mile threshold over two calendar years). All non-basic Miles & More status levels offer lounge access and executive bonus miles, with the higher levels offering more exclusive benefits.
The Polonez Lounge is located in the Schengen Zone of Warsaw Chopin Airport. The lounge is accessible to anyone with a business class ticket for travel with LOT or any other Star Alliance member airline, and those who have Star Alliance Gold status with a member airline (such as Miles & More Senator status) or the Polish State Airports authority's 'Good Start' program.
It is an exclusive zone within LOT Business Lounge Polonez where passengers can work peacefully and have rest in a comfort.
It includes quiet relaxation zone, place to work and an upgraded food and beverage menu.
The Mazurek Lounge is located in the Non-Schengen Zone on the ground floor of the Warsaw Chopin Airport and offers unique views of the apron.
LOT operates the Business Lounge at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 5. This is LOT's only lounge outside of Poland.
During the Cold War, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, several LOT aircraft were hijacked and forced to land in Western countries, predominantly in West Germany and especially in West Berlin, due to its proximity. The hijackers were usually not prosecuted there but could claim political asylum, along with all other passengers who wished to do so.