Did you know that LOT Polish Airlines is one of the world’s oldest airline in operation as it has been in operation for 90 years already! Today with their impressive 90 aircraft LOT Polish Airlines flies to 134 destinations across Europe, Asia and North America!
LOT Polish Airlines history starts in the early 1920s when the first aviation route in Warsaw was inaugurated and in 1921 the short-lived Aerotarg Poznań Aviation Society was founded. And even though today the airline is a proud operator of 13 different types of Boeing, Embraer and Bombardier aircraft throughout the history of operation, the airline is quite dynamic in their fleet.
Over the period of 90 years, the airline had 33 different types of aircraft including Li-2, Il-12, Il-18 Douglas DC-2 and DC-3, CV-240s, Il-62s, Tu-134, Tu-154M, Antonov An-24, Boeing 767, Boeing 737, Boeing 787, ATR-72s, Embraer ERJ-145 and many more. The airline may be called a true witness of aircraft development history. However, these are the most remarkable moments of the airline fleet development:
The first aircraft used by the airline were Junkers F.13 and Fokker F.VII.
- In September 1939, as the Second World War gathered force, sixteen out of twenty-six planes in the airline’s fleet were interned in Romania.
- Only in 1946 ten twin-engine Li-2 aircraft were received from the army and the first operations after the war were launched. In addition to those, LOT purchased nine Douglas DC-3.
- 1957 marks a year when three Covair CV-240s (American manufacturer) were delivered to the airline.
- In 1961 LOT purchased their first turboprop planes, the Soviet one-hundred-seater Il-18, extending the number to 8 by 1966.
- In 1972 the first long-haul Il-62s was introduced into the fleet.
- 1989. The first two Boeing were in service and the airline became the first European operator of that type.
- 1994. LOT Polish Airline appeared to have the newest fleet in the world.
- 2004. LOT became the first airline in the world to operate the Embraer 170.
- In 2010 the airline and Boeing aircraft manufacturer celebrated 20 years of cooperation.
- A proud moment in the airline’s history as in 2011 the world’s most modern passenger airplane at that time – Boeing 787 Dreamliner – was added to the fleet.
- After 20 years of operation LOT Polish Airlines replaced Boeing 767 with Boeing 787 Dreamliner in 2013.
- In 2017 the airline welcomed the newest fleet of Boeing 737-800 NG.
- Another milestone was reached in 2018 when the first Dreamliner 787-9, the newest, and the biggest to date, aircraft was added to the LOT fleet.
Source: corporate.lot.com/pl/en/history
