Review of LOT Polish flight from Warsaw to Kraków in Economy

Hi everyone,
After a break I'm back with a small series of two reports covering my weekend trip to my country's old capital - the city of Krakow (known in English also as Cracow). It's been a while since my February trip to SE Asia and lack of flying in this period made me appreciate even a short domestic flight. I hoped silently to fly one of LOT's new 737 MAX jets that sometimes operate on this route but this time we made it without any changes, delays and other disasters that could make our weekend shorter and harder. The only funny thing was (you may laugh but it always happens to me) that after a whole week of sunny weather on the day of the flight some heavy stormy clouds appeared over Poland to make my flight a little bit bumpy…. I hate turbulence!
Krakow is situated approximately 300 km southwards of Warsaw and as it is Poland's second biggest city, it can be reached in many different ways (fast train, slow train, bus, car) but I knew I wouldn't make it without flying to the holidays planned for the beginning of September, so the choice was easy. Anyway, a return ticket booked in advance costed only 50 euro and that was cheaper than the most popular solution on this route which is the fast "Pendolino" train.
As the flight was one of the early morning ones, I woke up entirely when I was already at the airport, after a completely uneventful security check (to my big astonishment noone was rude this time as it happens usually). I decided to begin my day with a little spotting using the wet tarmac and grey clouds as a background.
It's funny that in the moment of taking this picture I didn't know yet that this airline will take me in September to …. :)

Smartwings 737-800 operating one of the numerous in summer season charter flights

LOT E 175

and LH A 320 in Star Alliance livery to FRA

AF A 318 to CDG

Despite the rainy weather, we are taken to the aircraft by bus

But this allows me to take some pictures of the special anniversary sticker: NIEPODLEGŁA (here a copy of handwriting of Poland's chief of state Jozef Pilsudski) means INDEPENDENT (this year Poland celebrates the 100th anniversary of regaining its independence in 1918).

The E195 fuselage

SP-LRA was the first 787-800 to join LOT fleet, here seen from my seat

The cabin of this Embraer 195 looks really fresh and neat. The black leather seats look much better than the grey ones installed on the E70 and older E75 jets in LOT fleet.

Quite an abundant seat pocket contents as for a domestic flight

The BOB menu is useless as it's not available on domestic routes

We slowly begin our push-back

and start taxiing to the runway passing by two Nordica's CRJ-900 in this beautiful livery

This Q400 promotes flights to Israel being lately a very popular tourist destination in Poland

This E-75 is a 600th E-jet ever produced

Finally it's our turn

to leave rainy and stormy Warsaw

Above there is always sunshine and blue sky

But in a distance you may see some stormy clouds

The service during this 30-minutes hop is a traditional sweet snack + a glass of water

Descent is quite bumpy as we need to pass many layers of clouds in all the shades of white and grey, but eventually the weather seems to get better as we get closer to Krakow

Some green fields and A4 motorway connecting eastern and western borders may bee seen on short finals

Here we are

The tarmac in Krakow seems to be in constant renovation and we make many circles till we finally reach a remote stand

I may finally see the terminal that was completely rebuilt not long ago with addition of some jetbridges that seem not to be used by LOT

but there is still this Norwegian 737-800 that we need to pass by before we stop

The terminal doesn't look too big from the outside but as you will see in the report covering the flight back, they really made a good job here and inside you don't feel anymore as on a very small provincial airport

The baggage claim area and the arrivals hall look much better and spacious than before

We are going to try the train that should take us to the city centre in not more than 20 minutes. Great that you can reach the station directly from the terminal (before a shuttle bus connected the airport with the station)

That's all for now. Many thanks for reading. I'll be back soon with description of the flight back + some bonus pics from Krakow.