Flying LOT Polish Airlines’ business class from Lyon to Tokyo Narita via Warsaw, my expectations were low from the airline’s elderly longhaul hard product. But both the Eurobusiness element on an E190 and the longhaul 787 leg were a real revelation.
Not for the seat: the bones of the Safran Aura Lite flatbed without direct aisle access are over twenty years old at this point, it’s hard as a rock, the elderly IFE screen is tiny, and in a window seat you have to clamber over your slumbering aisle neighbour to get out. The sooner the forthcoming Recaro CL6720 seats arrive, the better.
But the soft product — service, food, and drinks — was exceptional, Warsaw was a quick-connecting delight, and with new Recaro staggered seats on the way there’s a LOT (sorry) to look forward to onboard this growing European powerhouse.
LOT’s E-190 Eurobusiness was exceptional, in service, style and legroom
Lyon flights alternate between LOT’s E-Jet fleet and its 737 MAXes, and on the day I flew it was one of the former.
The Lyon experience is essentially the same for all Schengen airlines: don’t-care outsourced third party ground handlers, the terrible, overcrowded, dirty lounge with genuinely awful food, and an overarching sense of ennui.
Onboard, though, LOT excelled from the start. Unlike many airlines operating E-Jets and other aircraft with a 2-2 layout of economy seats, the Eurobusiness here takes the no-neighbour principle rather than the blocked-middle policy, so I had the whole row to myself.
The Embraer seats are wider than a 737, and in row 2, the first on the right-hand side, I had a truly absurd amount of legroom, which was very welcome indeed. Image: John Walton
My carryons fit into the overhead bins, but if I hadn’t been the only person in business class there might have been a bit of a bunfight for space.
For a two-hour flight, I was pretty impressed by the catering, with a salmon starter, a potato hot dish, and a lemon tart.
It’s rare these days to get a substantial meal in Eurobusiness, and while the listed shakshuka was suspiciously ratatouillesque, it was hot, tasty and filling. Image: John Walton
The lone flight attendant up front offered warm rolls least twice, plus the savoury and sweet snack basket with its very moreish chocolate wafers several times after the meal was over.
I asked for a recommendation of a typically Polish cocktail, and he brought me a vodka with blackcurrant juice, which was a delight.
Apart from the blackcurrant juice — which I enjoyed both with and without the vodka — the drinks range was a little limited, though. I know the trend for a signature premixed cocktail is a bit overblown, and of course there are space limits in an Embraer galley, but a cherry vodka or bitter liqueur to mix with tonic or sparkling water would be a nice upgrade.
LOT’s glassware felt especially nice in the hand: weighty but still delicate, and with an unusual semi-fluting pattern that both added a bit of visual interest and gave a bit of extra grip.
But perhaps most surprising was the service, which was genuinely elegant. A linen tablecloth was set, the cocktail napkin was squared off underneath the bag of cashews, the glasses were lined up neatly, drinks and snacks were presented on trays or in a handsome basket, and the LOT branding throughout just felt very modern and Eurochic.
Perhaps most telling, before the flight attendants sat down to have their dinner, the business class crewmember took the initiative to serve me a fresh cocktail and offer the snack basket without me even needing to ask.
All in all, this felt well beyond the sort of experience I’ve had on many a larger European carrier in Eurobusiness, reminding me perhaps most closely with the era of Finnair before the Russia overflight bans since 2022.
The Warsaw connection was very convenient despite getting bus-gated on the inbound
Warsaw is in theory about six years from its new Port Polska airport opening, and LOT’s current Chopin hub (WAW) is creaking at the seams a little.
Indeed, my Embraer got a bus gate on the inbound, but in fairness to LOT I’ve recently been busgated at Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Vienna and Heathrow, some of which are pretty decent connections. (I’ll let you have your own thoughts about which.)
One benefit of WAW is that its compact terminal means for a handy connection, and the bus dropped us off centrally. Exiting Schengen was swift for this EU national at the automated gates, but there didn’t seem to be a visible EES line for non-EU passportholders.
LOT’s non-Schengen lounge is named Mazurek, and the airline itself admits it is “a unique space at Warsaw Chopin Airport”. It’s a tiny and rather poky room on ground level with floor-to-ceiling windows out onto the tarmac, which provided a bit of nighttime interest.
But it’s far too small — a capacity for 84, LOT says — and offers too few charging points at a time when not all shorthaul aircraft will have power sockets, and airlines are trying to dissuade passengers from using power banks.
It was too crammed even serving mainly the Tokyo flight at this time of night to get decent pictures of the space.
The food was also very picked-over, and not particularly appetising: the bland-slop-baked-onto-a-metal-tray sort of option, plus some suspiciously room temperature canapés and charcuterie.
The highlight was a dish of absolutely delicious Polish fudge sweets, and I’d absolutely purchase a bag of them in the terminal next time I went through.
The 787-9 seats are old but, again, exceptional soft product showcasing both literal and metaphorical Polish flavour
Boarding was rather cleverly done through two separate gates, enabling well-managed priority boarding — quite the rarity in today’s passenger experience, so congrats to LOT there.
Onboard, the Safran Aura Lite seat was as expected: elderly, hard, and lacking in direct aisle access, an innovation that débuted in 2003.
LOT’s current business class seat looks and feels like it’s from an older generation, which it is. Images: John Walton
Aura Lite itself is in essence between 20 and 25 years old at this point. Acumen designed the original Aura for the then-Contour, later Zodiac, and now Safran. Aura OG broke cover at the 2005 Aircraft Interiors Expo, and was later refined into the Lite and HD versions.
The seat was part of the increasingly outdated 787 showroom mockup at Boeing headquarters as late as 2017, when I visited.
Look, it wasn’t great, and LOT knows that. It has a new Recaro staggered suite coming, on which more shortly, and in the meantime offers at least a thin mattress-pad, which doesn’t add cushioning, but at least you’re not sitting and sleeping directly on the seat cover.
The seat itself at least extends in Z-bed mode with a legrest, but the tiny, clunky IFE screens were only good for the moving map. Holding my iPhone in front of me resulted in a greater effective screen size, let alone my 15” laptop on the main table.
All that said, I did get a good amount of sleep, not least since the tradeoff of no direct aisle access is no restrictive footwell, a big bonus for large-hoofed side-sleepers like me.
I was seated in 1F, although I’d have chosen a centre aisle seat in the 2-2-2 layout if I could, not least because the the windows were locked in blackout mode for almost the entirety of the flight. Even the arrival into Tokyo didn’t offer a view of Mt Fuji since we landed after dark.
With attractive stemware and a little nibble, LOT starts the flight off right. Images: John Walton
Again, however, the soft product was genuinely excellent. LOT offers an amuse-gueule along with actual Champagne and a variety of soft drinks served in real glasses.
LOT’s Tokyo services offered an extensive menu with four on-demand main courses, plus more as pre-orders, and an extensive wine and spirits list. Images: John Walton
The menu was extensive, with several additional pre-order options including a very tasty vegetarian pierogi main course that took my fancy, and was genuinely delicious.
I don’t especially care for fish, so two of the three starter options were, well, non-starters — but I mentioned it to the flight attendant and she was kind enough to rustle up a couple of options from, I think, the chilled European-style breakfast trays.
I must say, LOT’s serviceware is quirky and interesting, with this set of exclusive ceramics from Polish designers Manufactura on the Tokyo route, launched earlier in 2026. I was genuinely charmed, and it really made the service feel unique and premium.
A wide choice of cheeses, cakes and fruit was served on an elegant trolley with a two-tiered cakestand and a choice of several liqueurs, which was a genuinely lovely touch and one that you’d only see in first class on many an airline.
During the flight I enjoyed an onigiri rice ball and a couple of those excellent LOT chocolate wafers, and before landing I chose the Japanese meal, which was… let’s say it was pretty good for a European carrier catering out of Europe, but nothing like JAL or ANA.
LOT’s Japanese bento-style box was attractive, and the quality was reasonable (please do excuse the mess of napkins resulting from the combination of tea and turbulence). Images: John Walton
Once again, the crew were excellent, especially given a full cabin of passengers with a departure just before 11pm, many of whose priority was a quick meal before sleeping.
Regular passes through the cabin with trays of water and juice, as well as exhortations to ring the call bell with any requests, were very welcome given the lack of direct aisle access.
LOT’s amenity kit also stood out, with the corduroy-effect brown amenity kit proving very useful on my trip, and and being generously stuffed with cosmetics from Polish brand Phenomé, including a nice face mist and some under-eye patches that, after the nearly 12-hour trip to Tokyo, proved very useful indeed. There were also high-quality socks, much improved on the usual type, and closer to what you might find in an actual shop.
It’s probably telling that it was so hard to capture photos of the products on board that my photos are from my arrival hotel in Tokyo. Images: John Walton
The standout, though, was the wrap-around wide sleep mask in a soft satin polyester that closed with velcro, rather than the elasticated bandit-style version seen on most other airlines. This was an absolute revelation: just the right tightness, full blackout, and adjustable for larger heads. It went straight into my carry-on for re-use.
There is in theory Viasat wifi rolling out to these 787-9s, but neither my phone nor laptop would connect to the network, and the crew mentioned that there was some sort of problem when I asked.
Honestly, for a night flight, I wasn’t upset: I always have something downloaded to my phone and laptop to watch anyway.
With the Recaro-shape of things to come, LOT is in pole position in central Europe
I’m not going to pretend that LOT’s current seat is great: it’s not, although honestly it wasn’t as bad as I thought, even if it could use a squashy mattress pad à la JAL or ANA.
But its soft product is truly excellent, and that sets it up well for when its tangerine-designed Recaro CL3720 — or possibly R7, following the renaming? It’s not entirely clear — seats arrive.
Recaro’s staggered seats, with tangerine’s genuinely impressive aesthetics, will be a great improvement. Images: LOT
Delivery was “scheduled to commence in 2026” back at the announcement in June 2023, when LOT promised that “passengers will be able to board LOT Polish Airlines aircraft with a completely modernised cabin in 2026”, starting with its smaller 787-8 Dreamliners.
There isn’t exactly a lot of wiggle room left in 2026, and in any case, it seems like my 787-9 wouldn’t have been first on the list for the new seats.
LOT does need to work on its digital experience, though. You can’t use its app as a guest without signing up, and I got several copies of each email about my boarding gates, at both Lyon and Warsaw.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to any airline that the digital experience with checkin, boarding passes and so many other parts of the journey are increasingly important.
Even today, there’s much to recommend the LOT experience, and much to learn from it — and with new seats, eventually the benefit of the new Warsaw Airport six years or so from now, and hopefully an improved digital portfolio, there’ll be a LOT more to look forward to as well.
