LOT Polish Airlines is back after a long hiatus on united.com. The Polish flag carrier operates a fleet of 787s to North American gateways including Chicago, New York JFK, and Toronto and award space in both business and economy class is excellent…or at least was.
I’ll be honest – I am not happy about this space re-appearing on united.com because that means it will be booked up quickly. This is the recurring tension over award space – make it easy to search and book and decimate the inventory or keep it relatively hidden (i.e., off the user-friendly united.com search engine) so that award space remains available for those in the know. For myself, friends, family, and clients, I preferred the latter, but if you are planning a trip to Europe, booking is now easy on united.com.
The space appeared about three weeks ago on united.com and I have been tracking it ever since. What prompted this post is that the business class award inventory (usually two and no more than two seats per flight) is disappearing fast.
Take Toronto to Warsaw: a couple weeks ago the calendar below was green on many more days, meaning there were award seats in business and economy class available. While economy class space is still there, you can see that business class space is disappearing for the coming months.
So be aware that this space is bookable and that if you are interested in flying on LOT in the next 11 months, the time to book your space is now.
Stay tuned for an upcoming review of LOT business class between Chicago and Warsaw. I found the lie-flat seats and service very good, though the food lacking.
Keep in mind, that you can book this for 70K UA miles each way with no fuel surcharge, but that when booking with other mileage programs, the fuel surcharge is comparatively low, often just a fraction of what you would pay for Lufthansa or Austrian flgihts. That makes booking with Aeroplan a better deal, where you will pay just 45K miles for a one-way business class ticket to Poland or any point in western Europe and your taxes/fees will be under $100.
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