Summary
- LOT Polish Airlines focuses on regional and short-haul flights, with widebodies making up less than 20% of its fleet.
- LOT operated the Boeing 767-200ER and 767-300ER models before transitioning to the 787 Dreamliner family.
- A gear-up landing in 2011 marked the end of the operational life of a LOT 767-300ER, with no fatalities.
LOT Polish Airlines’ fleet has a strong regional and short-haul focus. Indeed, data from ch-aviation shows that the Polish flag carrier has just 16 widebodies in its current 78-aircraft setup, with 15 Boeing 787s and one leased Airbus A330-900 accounting for less than 20% of the carrier’s planes. Nonetheless, widebodies play an important role in connecting Poland directly to longer-haul destinations.
This role at Poland’s national airline previously fell to aircraft from the Boeing 767 family, with LOT having operated multiple examples of both the 767-200ER and 767-300ER variants over the years. While now no longer part of the furniture at the Warsaw-based Star Alliance member, LOT Polish Airlines’ use of the type is still relatively fresh in the memory. Let’s examine its relationship with these planes.
The 767-200ER
According to historical fleet data made available by ch-aviation, the first variant of Boeing’s 767 family that LOT Polish Airlines received was the 767-200ER. This model entered service in 1984, and was an extended-range version of the original 767-200, which itself had been introduced in 1982. The Polish flag carrier took delivery of its first 767-200ER in April 1989, with the second coming in May 1990.
These aircraft were registered as SP-LOA and SP-LOB, and, according to Planespotters.net, respectively bore the names Gniezno and Kraków, after two Polish cities. The Boeing 767 served to replace the Ilyushin Il-62, which had once been the world’s largest jetliner, at LOT, and both aircraft enjoyed nearly two decades of service with the Polish flag carrier, eventually joining Mexicana in 2008.
In addition to this pair of long-serving Boeing 767-200ER aircraft, data from ATDB.aero shows that LOT Polish Airlines briefly operated a third example of the type on lease from Air New Zealand. Still bearing the Kiwi registration ZB-NKJ, this particular aircraft enjoyed the following three spells at the Polish flag carrier:
- May – October 1992.
- March – October 1993.
- May – November 1994.
The 767-300ER
While the original Boeing 767-200 was a capable aircraft, its seven-abreast (2-3-2) economy class configuration did limit its passenger capacity somewhat. Luckily, Boeing had introduced a stretched version, the 767-300, by 1986. This was followed two years later by the extended-range 767-300ER, of which LOT Polish Airlines went on to operate seven. These aircraft arrived between 1990 and 2009.
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Passenger and cargo operators continue to rely on the aging widebody.
Photo: Mariusz Klarowicz | Shutterstock
LOT Polish Airlines’ Boeing 767-300ERs also had a fairly wide range about them in terms of when they left the airline. Indeed, ch-aviation’s data shows that they did so across more than a decade, between 2002 and 2013, although five of the seven lasted until at least 2011. These aircraft went on to fly for carriers including Euro Atlantic Airways and Kharkiv Airlines, although some were scrapped or written off.
LOT Polish Airlines ultimately went on to replace its Boeing 767s with aircraft from the US planemaker’s next-generation 787 ‘Dreamliner’ family. These began arriving in 2012, and the Polish flag carrier now operates 15 aircraft from this game-changing series. Of these, eight are short-fuselage 787-8s, and seven are examples of the mid-sized 787-9 variant, with respective average ages of 10.1 and 5.5 years.
A famous gear-up landing
One particular plane from LOT Polish Airlines’ sub-fleet of 767-300ER aircraft stands out as having had a far more eventful end to its working life than the rest, namely SP-LPC Poznań. The Polish flag carrier received this aircraft in May 1997, and, save for brief leases to Air Italy and Santa Barbara Airlines, it served the airline for its entire career. This came to an end in an alarming fashion in November 2011.
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While such incidents are rare, there have been some notable examples over the years.
Specifically, the plane was involved in a gear-up landing in Warsaw, Poland. According to the Aviation Safety Network, This happened at the conclusion of a service from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), numbered as flight 16. A hydraulic failure shortly after departing Newark meant that, when the time came to lower the landing gear on approach to Warsaw, the wheels would not deploy.
The pilots elected to land the aircraft on its belly after circling for around an hour, allowing them to burn excess fuel and for emergency services to prepare. Incredibly, no fatalities or injuries resulted from the gear-up landing, with all 231 occupants evacuated within 90 seconds, although the 767 was damaged beyond repair.
Operational usage snapshot
Using historical scheduling data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, we can get a good idea of the kinds of routes on which LOT Polish Airlines used to deploy its Boeing 767 aircraft. For example, in 2013, the last year of 767 operations at LOT, the Polish flag carrier scheduled 868 flights with the type, offering collective totals of 210,900 seats and 920,205,742 available seat miles (ASMs).
Photo: Eliyahu Yosef Parypa | Shutterstock
The carrier’s top route for the type that year was New York JFK to Warsaw Chopin (WAW), peaking at 44 rotations in June 2013, followed closely behind by 40 in July of that year. Other important destinations for LOT’s 767s in their final year of operations included North American hubs such as Chicago (ORD) and Toronto (YYZ), as well as Asian destinations like Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK).
Did you ever fly on one of LOT Polish Airlines’ Boeing 767s? If so, when did you do so, and where did the aircraft take you? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!