Intro
The next portion of the series, “5 nights on a plane,” would see me heading off to Istanbul onboard a LOT E195 in Business Class. Following a redeye from New York and exploring a little bit of downtown Warsaw, it was time to get ready to go to yet another country (although I am not counting this yet since I didn't leave the airport this time)!
LOT once again impressed me with their offerings on such a short flight. While European Business Class isn’t much to get excited about (hard product-wise), it was quite impressive to see printed menus, friendly service, and decent food. Let’s get into it!
Routing
Flight routing
- 1
- 2
- 3LO135- Business- Warsaw- Istanbul- Embraer E195
How I Booked
As I wrote about in the last report, I booked this flight as part of a multi-city Aeroplan adventure for 87.5K Miles. Ordinarily, this flight would cost 70K Aeroplan points in Business or 88K on United. Considering I paid 87.5K Miles for the following, this is a fantastic redemption:
New York-Warsaw LOT 787-9 Business
Warsaw-Istanbul LOT E190 Business
2 more legs after
Check-In
Once completing my adventure in Warsaw (first a few pictures of Warsaw). Really enjoyed the day I had here.
It was time to call an Uber and head off on the 20-minute drive to Warsaw Airport. If you happen to be flying business class, ask to be dropped off by door 1 as LOT has a dedicated check-in for *A Gold passengers+ Business Class passengers.
Even with a boarding pass for this leg previously obtained, I inquired as to whether they could print my onward boarding pass on Turkish Airlines to Dhaka. Unfortunately, LOT cannot do this. Womp womp, gotta have a little stress in your life to hit those dopamine highs 😉.
Around Warsaw Airport
Security is a complete breeze in Warsaw, to the point where I felt like I was by the ocean (my puns get funnier and funnier every time (NOT)). Clearing security, I headed up to the lounge, thinking, “I have a couple of hours to kill; why not relax a little?”.
Planes!
I must have lost some brain cells in the process of flying the past two nights, as I forgot that there are Schengen zones and non Schengen zones. The agent had a little laugh and invited me to stay but recommended I head through passport control as it can get busy.
It’s pretty hard to miss the passport control area. If you have a brain (clearly unlike myself on this day), just head right after security and follow the signs. My gosh it was packed as it ended up taking close to 30 minutes.
The LOT Lounge
LOT operates two lounges inside Warsaw: the Schengen lounge and the non-Schengen departure lounges. Usually, I would review a lounge more in depth, but it was so busy that I couldn’t take many pictures.
Here is a quick summary of the lounge:
This lounge is accessible to passengers who are *A gold or business class passengers with a valid same-day boarding pass on an *A carrier.
The lounge is small and gets packed during the peak departure hours to the US
They have an okay selection of food and drink, but nothing exceptional
The lounge features a SINGLE shower suite.
Delicious.
The plane I was on earlier.
It's pretty disappointing, honestly, and this is a lounge that I do not recommend you allocate extra time to visit.
Boarding
After an hour's wait for a shower later (and a shower), it was time to head off to the gate area to board this beautiful Embraer E195 over to Warsaw. Ahh, yes, I almost forgot Warsaw doesn’t have a lot of gates, so most of these smaller birds board through a remote stand.
Boarding commenced at 12:30 pm sharp for our scheduled 12:55 pm departure from Gate 1N.
I have a serious pet peeve with remote stands for one reason. Most airlines board business class first, tell the passengers to move inside, and then economy will be the first ones on the plane. Yes, we are definitely talking about first-world problems here, but it is a touch infuriating.
At least we got some good views heading out to the remote stand as we passed by an Air China A330 bound for Beijing. I just booked that yesterday to get over to Afghanistan (flying into Islamabad) in a couple of weeks!
Soon enough, we arrived at our E195 taking us over to Istanbul today.
The Seat/Cabin
Stepping onboard as the last passenger from the bus, I found an all too familiar 2-2 setup on the Embraer E190. While the size of the business class cabin can vary from flight to flight, today, we only had two rows.
The nice thing about European Business Class is that the seat next to you is blocked off. Contrary to others' opinions, I would prefer to fly on an E195 with a blocked seat versus an A320 in a 2-2 configuration.
There's not much to the seat, honestly. It features a tray table, a recline button, and fine legroom.
I am sorry, this is the only report of the series which I don't have actual cabin shots.
Departure
Settling into my seat, I was pleasantly greeted by a lovely flight attendant who would be working the business class cabin today. She asked me if she could get me something, and I responded with water. A PDB on a European carrier? I came close to putting the seatbelt around my head to keep my jaw from dropping 😉.
The second bus delivering passengers was delayed, meaning boarding wasn’t officially wrapped up until 10 minutes after the scheduled pushback.
By 1:12 pm local time, the captain came on to announce our flight time of 2 hours and 15 minutes over to Istanbul and that we would be pushing back any second now.
A couple of minutes later, we taxied out past the non-Schengen terminal and were wheels up to Istanbul a few minutes later.
Liftoff
A little bit of Poland
Amenities
I am pleased to report that there was plenty to go around on today's flight. Turndown service, Krug champagne, and Starlink wifi. Yeah… no. There wasn’t a single amenity on today's flight, nor any wifi, nor any IFE streaming.
I am a big fan of LOT (especially their new lounge at ORD), and while I can excuse amenities on such a short flight, I do think they need to add wifi or IFE sooner rather than later.
Meal Service
Once we hit 10,000 feet, the lovely flight attendant came around to distribute menus for us to take a look at. I’ve gotta say, three options for a flight that is just over 2 hours is quite the offering. Nor was this the BA menu either with a couple of salad options (sorry but the last 4 hour flight from IST with BA was kaka), but a chicken breast and cod dish sounded delicious.
Seeing as I am a creature of habit, I decided to spice things up a little bit and go for the fish dish (a complete rarity). Within 20 minutes, I had a glass of red wine, sparkling water, and a magnificent fish dish. Top marks here, LOT, as few airlines West of Asia (yes, the earth is flat not round 😉) do what you do this well in Business on a short flight.
Delightful
Arrival
After finishing up the meal, I began to get a little bit tired. Scratch that; I was knackered. Tucking into my seat, I managed to get about an hour of rest before I woke up on final descent into Istanbul.
We touched down on a sunny day in Istanbul ahead of schedule at 4:30 pm. There must have been some turbulence on approach as I felt like I was a kid in a bouncy castle 😅.
Ahh, yes, I’ll have some time to check out the Turkish Lounge in Istanbul since we landed early.
No… We sat, and we sat
4:40
4:50
Finally, 5:00 pm came around, and we pulled into Istanbul International Airport. Bidding farewell to the crew, it was time to properly leg it as I had no boarding pass, wasn’t checked in, and we were supposed to board in 20 minutes 😅.
But to where is the question? Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and have a nice day! 🙂
Ah yes, because it was cake 😆
Me too, I always hate that. Priority boarding is so stupid and pointless when you do bus boarding, BUT I usually get over it very quickly because the awesome tarmac views make up for it haha. If I weren't such a nerd, I'd be more pissed about it 😄
That's true of most airlines on most narrowbody types, but several airlines, including BA, IB, AF, and KL do not block off the adjacent seat on E-Jets and CRJs where there's a 2-2 configuration, which sucks. So basically there's no difference in hard product at all between J and Y on those airlines. It hasn't stopped by from flying IB J on CRJs frequently, but that's mostly because they're either connecting itineraries or paid in avios for barely more than Y...plus I rarely travel alone so I don't have to worry about sitting next to a stranger. Still it's unfortunate, so good on LOT for blocking off the seats on their E190s, since it's not a given!
Whoa, I've never seen that before.
What a lovely well-presented meal with proper stemware...not the stubby fake airplane stemware most airlines have.
Once again, a nice showing by LOT!
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Kevin, thanks again for your comments!
Tbh, you are so correct. The tarmac views really do somewhat make up for it. Especially when you get to the plane and you are up and close with the beautiful bird.
I'll never understand this fully. I took a flight with BA, and minus the drinks and such, it's basically the same. In comparison to Air Dolomiti who also does like LOT.
Plus back in the day, the extra tier points 😅.
Yeah, the PDB felt quite odd in a good way, guessing it's not the norm but who knows.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a nice day! 🙂
Ugh, don’t remind me 🤣
RIP
Speaking of, it took me over a month fighting with BA trying to get TPs and Avios for my last few IB flights so I have Noooooo idea how they’re going to be able to calculate Avios based on fare paid to IB when they clearly admitted IB dont share the fare and payment information with BA. Obviously that’s ridiculous since they’re basically they’re both in the IAH group. Apparently it’s been like that for months—it seems no one is getting IB flights crediting to BA automatically since like last November. What a bloody mess! I’m fully expecting BA to roll back the /TP calculations based on fare paid for IB since they can’t seem to get their shit together between the two of them. I did notice on my recent trip that BA are indeed getting fare information from AA, so that one will stick. It’s so fitting that BA chose April 1st to begin the New Tier Points scheme …we’ll all be Fools on April 1st 🤣
*IAG …damn autocorrect hah
They must have a new system coming soon no? I like the way United does it with Star Alliance partners fare class, distance and either divided by 5 or 6. It'd be cool if they took it upon the same way, but I am guessing not.
Or maybe it was a joke the whole time 😮