WARSAW – LOT Polish Airlines will suspend flights from Warsaw to Los Angeles for a while at the beginning of next year, according to the Polish carrier’s booking system. The route to California will be suspended from 11 January to 26 March 2023. However, the number of flights to Tokyo will be increased, the ‘AeroRoutes‘ website reports.
Los Angeles flights
The suspension of flights to Los Angeles is a rather surprising decision by the national carrier, although, on the face of it, the beginning of the year is the period of least demand for travel to the West Coast of the USA. The service will be suspended for quite a long time – flights will not operate from 11 January until 26 March 2023.
Interestingly, once the route resumes in the spring, LOT will not reinstate it at full frequency. According to Polish media outlets, for the next two months until the beginning of June next year, the route will be operated not daily, but only four times a week.
The service to California took off for the first time on 3 April 2017. LOT’s Dreamliners flew to Los Angeles on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. In 2019, the carrier increased frequencies and flew to LA daily.
Following a coronavirus pandemic, the airline was forced to suspend the route, which only returned this year. Since 27 March, LOT has been linking Warsaw with Los Angeles again, and since June the flights have already been daily. The route is operated with Boeing B787-8 or B787-9 Dreamliners.
More flights to Tokyo-Narita
At the same time, LOT plans to slightly increase the number of flights to Tokyo from this autumn, where it currently flies only once a week. The carrier was already planning to fly more frequently to the Japanese capital a few months ago, but Russian aggression in Ukraine, among other things, stood in the way.
Russia’s aggression and the associated sanctions (a ban on flights over Russia) have put many European carriers flying to Asia in trouble. The reason, of course, is that they have to fly to Asia by a circuitous route, which makes flight times very long. LOT’s CEO Rafał Milczarski was already complaining strongly about this a few months ago.
We also had to significantly lengthen some long-haul routes. These include long-haul routes, which have become significantly longer, even by 4 to 6 hours in terms of individual rotations. I never imagined that a flight to Tokyo could take more than 14 hours, which is the situation we are currently facing. However, we are not giving up and we intend to survive this,’ Milczarski told the Fly4Free portal.
At least on the Warsaw-Tokyo route, LOT Polish Airlines intends to ‘put up a fight’. As reported by AeroRoutes, from 4 November, the carrier will fly to the Japanese capital twice a week (departures on Tuesdays and Fridays), and from 2 March 2023, there will be a third rotation on this route, which will be performed on Thursdays.
The most important question, however, is how long the airline will maintain these connections. After all, the booking system shows that flights from Warsaw to Tokyo currently take 12.5 hours, and from Tokyo to Warsaw – as long as 15.5 hours…
