Review: LOT E195 Business Class Warsaw-Istanbul
Updated: 5 days ago
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!
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!
Route- Warsaw (WAW)-Istanbul (IST)
Seat- 2A
Flight Number- LO135
Aircraft- Embraer 195
Date- August 16th 2024
Flight Time- 2 Hours 45 Minutes
Price Paid- 87.5K Aeroplan Miles+120$ (4 legs)
How I Booked
As I wrote about in a separate post, I booked this flight as part of a multi-city Aeroplan adventure for 87.5K Miles. Ordinarily, this routing 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
Istanbul-Dhaka- TK A330-300 Business
Dhaka-Bangkok TG 777-200 Business
Check-In
Once completing my adventure in Warsaw, I called an Uber and headed 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?”.
I must have lost some brain cells in the process of moving to America, 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 separately, 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.
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!
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.
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.
Amenities/IFE/Wifi
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, 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, 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) do what you do this well in Business on a short flight.
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 😅.
Final Thoughts
LOT Polish Airlines offers a solid short-haul European Business Class product. If you happen to be connecting somewhere from Warsaw over to another destination, you’ll be treated to good service, a nice meal, and an empty seat next to you. Just be aware that almost all of the narrowbodies tend to operate from remote stands, and there is no WIFI/IFE onboard.
Comments