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Home  >  Ukraine 2023 Trip Report  >  Late Arrival Creates Flight Dilemma In Poland
Ukraine 2023 Trip Report

Late Arrival Creates Flight Dilemma In Poland

Matthew Klint Posted onFebruary 28, 2023February 28, 2023 12 Comments

This week I’m “liveblogging” my trip to Ukraine. Unlike traditional reports, these posts will be shorter and more frequent.


With the late arrival of my bus (7:30 am instead of 5:00 am), I was forced to take a gamble on award flight space that thankfully paid off.

Flight Dilemma: Cancel And Rebook Or Fly From Warsaw To New York Via Chișinău And Warsaw (Yes, Warsaw Again) To Be Safe?

I had planned to fly home on a LOT 737 MAX 8 from Warsaw to London, connecting from London to Los Angeles on United Airlines. That flight left Warsaw at 7:50 am.

But by the time we reached Dworzec Autobusowy Warszawa Zachodnia (the west bus station), it was already 7:30 am. I canceled my flight in order to avoid a no-show fee and sat down to work on a solution home. The station was crowded and freezing cold.

There was no immediate solution for my trip home.

I’m not sure why a Saturday in February was so busy, but there were very few options to get me home that day and I needed to get home that day.

Recall, I had booked an alternate way home on LOT Polish from Chișinău (KIV) to New York (JFK) via Warsaw (WAW) when I was considering the train back. There was no additional space from WAW to JFK and I figured if I canceled the ticket from KIV, the space may not return to inventory (especially since we were now talking about same-day travel).

Thus, my choice was to fly to KIV that morning on LOT to catch the flight back to WAW and on to JFK, or cancel the space and hope I could rebook the WAW-JFK space by itself.

I took the risk and canceled the space.

And waited a moment.

Boom. The award space went back into inventory and I was able to rebook it (70K Aeroplan to JFK in business class). From New York, I’d travel home to Los Angeles (LAX) on JetBlue, though the connection was again tight.

It was on to Chopin Airport and a day of lounge hopping and catching up on work.


Side note: I was in such a deep sleep that I did not notice we had reached the station in Warsaw…and no one woke me up. Thankfully, I heard the cargo door of the bus slam shut just as it was about to depart for the next Polish city. Otherwise, I would have woken up in Poznan and had a whole new problem on my hand!

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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12 Comments

  1. Santastico Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 10:28 am

    I really hope you can get a shower before boarding your plane to the US. 🙂

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      February 28, 2023 at 10:46 am

      Spoiler alert: I certainly did! 😉

  2. MeanMeosh Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 10:47 am

    If you were a cat, you would have used up 8 of your 9 lives in the luck department on this trip the way all the pieces just fell in place. Well done but maybe you shouldn’t tempt fate with weird itineraries for a while 🙂

  3. Jerry Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 11:54 am

    Merry Christmas and Happy Easter can be the same phrase in Polish, so it’s unclear if the decoration folks at Warsaw West are really lazy, or super ambitious.

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      February 28, 2023 at 12:01 pm

      And I assure you this is not an old report! 😉

  4. HkCaGu Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 12:27 pm

    Wouldn’t the KIV-WAW be a turnaround for WAS-KIV?

  5. PolishKnight Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 1:21 pm

    Sounds like you got it worked out. Another option would have been to consider booking flights out of KRK (Krakow) and connecting via PKP rail (2 to 3 hours). There’s a (new) rail line from Krakow central rail station to the Krakow airport. Although KRK is a charming, small airport with far fewer connections, I have found routes of out of there unavailable via Warsaw.

  6. Billiken Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 1:43 pm

    Maybe the cigarette guy told everyone else not to wake you up 😉

  7. BoardingAreaFlukie Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 2:19 pm

    That looks like a very unpleasant place to have to figure out your next travel move, especially as it was so cold. Glad you got it worked out.

    BTW, you’ll arrive to an LA cold spell with the high tomorrow only in the low 50s. Maybe you’ll still get to see the unusually low snow levels.

  8. PM1 Reply
    February 28, 2023 at 10:07 pm

    Yay! So glad you made it. Was worried at little after the cliffhanger yesterday of your welcome into Poland.

  9. R Reply
    March 5, 2023 at 2:34 am

    Why would you take a bus?! If you were in such a hurry, take a car. Sounds like you just have to blame someone other than yourself.

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      March 5, 2023 at 2:26 pm

      I wish I would have taken the car, though I ended up having a lovely flight on LOT Polish to JFK>

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