Review of LOT Polish flight from Warsaw to Lviv in Economy

Hi Everyone,
Welcome to this flight report covering the first leg of my trip to the city of Lwow/Lviv in western Ukraine. Initially I planned to fly UIA and combine my visit to Lwow with a stopover in Kiev but it ended up with a simple WAW-LWO-WAW trip with LOT. At the very beginning my flight to Lwow was supposed to be operated by an E195, then to my big dislike the plane was changed to DH4 and finally the day before the flight it was changed to E75. I'm not a big E-jet fan but having flown lately mostly onboard DH4 (I'm afraid that if I book a flight to JFK once LOT will change the plane to DH4 too ;) ) I was really fed up with this plane and a good old Embraer was a relief.
At first the airport seemed not so crowded but when it came to security the queue was long and slow as hell.
The airport landside - LOT economy class check-in desks

Having passed the security we headed to the gates area and passport control as we were travelling outside EU and Shengen zone. There again the queues were long and slow. To make things worse for some passengers in a hurry, the Emirates B777-300 crew arrived athe control desks and blocked them totally having a priority pass. Some arguments started while people stood there long enough and were anxious about making it for their flights. Finally more desks were open and the problem solved.
Departures board

I was glad we were flying from the non-Shengen zone as I could spot some more interesting aircrafts.
EK 777-300 to Dubai

LOT 737-400

LOT/NORDICA CRJ 900 to Tallinn. LOT has lately bacome a shareholder of Nordica and all their flights operating from Tallinn as well as some LOT flights to ARN, VNO and TLL are operated by Nordica aircrafts.

LOT E75 to Minsk

LOT 788

Boarding started on time, my seat was at the very rear of the aircraft so I should have boarded it first right after the business class passengers but as the staff at the gate made no effort to stop passengers from the front rows from boarding before the rear ones it was better to wait and come on board when everyone has already taken his seat.
The gate

Our E75 for today's flight

The LF was about 80% and surprisingly there were 3 flight attendants on this flight (there used to be two on all LOT E70/75 flights). While the middle-aged male purser was ok, the two young FA's at the rear of the aircraft seemed not to notice they were at work. They chatted all the time in the aft galley about their broken relationships so the last row passengers could easily hear all the datails. They showed no interest to passengers during boarding and the same during flight. It looked as if they had a nice talk and in the meantime they made some completely irrelevant actions like serving beverages or crosschecking the doors. I always thought the problem in LOT were the "old" FAs, the ones that remembered the communist period while it was ok to be rude to everyone and actually no politness was present. Now I see the new generation is not much better, even though they live in completely different times. I know that it is not a fascinating job, at least not for everyone but this kind of attitude shows nothing good for the future.
The cabin

The pitch was very good as on all the LOT E-jets

Some spotting during taxi

Borajet???

Another CRJ 900 flying for LOT/Nordica

Ryanair 737-800 operating only domestic flights to WRO and GDN from WAW

SU A320

AF A320 in special livery

and WIZZ A320 in very special livery

Take off and snowy landscapes begin

We made a deep turn left towards south-east

Finally over the clouds

The service (cofee and tea is complimentary in the winter, I asked for an empty coffe cup too as I was having tea for my cup collection)

Let's have a look into the inflight magazine. Some fleet news as the 737-800 and 737 MAX are finally coming. Some news about cooperation with Nordica too.

The safety card

The flight despite being planned for 1 hour was supposed to last about 45 minutes. Descend started while service was still in progress (the young FAs took their time).

It seems there is more snow in Ukraine than in Poland

As we landed the new terminal appeared, WOW it looks great but do they need it that big?

Parking next to Turkish 737-800

One more look at TK 737-800 and our E75

The terminal looks empty and feels cold, I think they don't want to spend money on heating while there is not much traffic at LWO and the building is really huge.

The passport control is quick but some strange questions as my name and destination are asked. The lady seemed quite surprised I came to Lviv to visit the city, I don't know why.
Let's look on the arrivals board, not too many flights this day…

We asked about the possibilities to reach the city at the information desk and decided to take the local bus not only because it was cheaper than cheap (4 hryvnas = 0,14 euro) but to try something local. The schedule showed it should depart every 10 minutes, actually we spent more than 20 minutes on the bus stop and while we finally decided to go back to the terminal and wait there as it was freezing cold, a small and old like hell bus finally appeared. Let me just say it looked inside exactly as my photo beneath shows and there was no heating, so -10 outside, -10 on the bus :) Welcome to Ukraine.

Thanks for reading.
Loukas