Today marks the start of an intensive period of business travel - Rzeszów - Kraków - Wrocław - Warsaw - London. The first leg is to be a flight from Warsaw to Rzeszów, on LOT Polish Airlines. Boarding due at 10:00, departure 10:30, arrival 11:25.
Shortly after 10, passengers were informed that our flight was delayed "for technical reasons". We were told that we would be kept informed - we were not. Outside the window, however, we could see our plane, an Embraer ERJ-195, standing by the sleeve, with its left-hand engine's inspection panel open and two mechanics working away at it. This continued beyond departure time (no announcements). Then a fire engine turned up. The panel was closed, the engine started up. No flames on anything untoward, standard operating practice - when unplanned engine maintenance work has been completed, a fire engine has to be present. The sleeve pulls back from the airliner's door (bad news). The fire engine drives off (good news). The mechanics gather their tools and drive ofp in their van. We wait. Finally an announcement calls us to the gate to commence boarding. A bit more delay inside the plane.
The plane leaves the ground at 11:55, and touches down in Rzeszów at 12:27; flying time 32 minutes.
The flight is smooth, the weather great, the views lovely. But the arrival is over an hour late. I dash for a taxi and make it to the meeting arriving ten minutes late. Not the end of the world, but the first presentation is already under way (from our host), and my late arrival does not look good.
LOT's in-flight magazine, Kaleidoscope, has a foreword from the airline's chairman apologising for the frequent delays experienced by passengers over the summer period, saying that this is now in the past. Clearly it is not. Yesterday, I read the story of a LOT flight (by Boeing Dreamliner) from Warsaw to Beijing that flew as far as the Urals then had to turn around and head back to Warsaw "because of vibration from one of the engines".
Not looking good for LOT. I wrote earlier about the Polish government's ambitions to build a new central communications port south-west of Warsaw in Baranów; this will only be feasible if LOT can grow in the next few years into a 'super-connector' airline to rival Emirates, Qatar and Turkish; this will not happen if passengers lose trust in the airline's ability to get them to their destinations on time. All down to proper maintenance. Prices too - this summer, my father's flight to Warsaw with my daughter Moni on LOT cost nearly twice as much as my father's return flight to London with me via BA.
My last LOT flight, from Munich, arrived late in Warsaw (just under an hour, but it was an evening flight and the delay cut into my sleep time); my father's first flight to Warsaw in 40 years, by LOT, arrived four hours late); the sobriquet 'Late Or Tomorrow' is justifiably deserved.
This time three years ago:
English as she is used in Europe
This time four years ago:
Where asphalt's needed - Nowy Podolszyn to Zgorzala
This time nine years ago:
I cycle to work along the cyclepath along ul. Rosoła
This time ten years ago:
First apple (today, the same tree groans with fruit)
This time 11 years ago:
Late summer spiders webs
Pruszkow is over the wing. Brwinow is to the right of the engine. A westerly take off from Okecie.
ReplyDelete@ John Savery
ReplyDeleteCorrect! Brwinów is the answer I was looking for.
FlightRadar24 has flightpaths for all commercial flights for the past seven days (for free - up to a year if you pay!)
FlightRadar24 is a useful tool, I found it through your blog a good few years ago. I didn't use it on this occasion. We've cycled out to Brwinow before, and the railway line helped.
ReplyDeleteI am glad it is not just me that feels like LOT flights are consistently late these days. I now refer to them as Late On Takeoff. I also have the misfortune of using their new 737 Max (Max discomfort that is), for someone who is 6'4'' it is an extraordinarily uncomfortable flight and so avoid it where ever possible.
ReplyDeleteI like reading your blog entries but sometimes you do seem a bit one sided. In this instance I feel it's disingenuous to criticize LOT with the two examples you provided, your flight and the Beijing plane which had to turn around due to the engine trouble. The issue with the Dreamliner flight to Beijing is specific to the Rolls Royce Trent engines which if you Google is a big issue for many carriers. Two of the most affected are British Airways and Virgin.
ReplyDeleteAlso you mention LOT pricing compared to BA yet no details provided on how or when these flights were booked. I am always getting e-mails from LOT for flights from the US to Poland and other destinations and the prices are pretty darn good.
Just seems a bit unfair for you to talk about LOT in such negative terms without all the details being provided.
Cheers!
@ Gordon Hawley:
ReplyDeleteI could have provided the chapter-and-verse but didn't want to bore people with detail.
LOT has had many issues with maintenance-related delays (as a brief bit of googling in Polish will prove). My own experiences with LOT in recent years have been less than great. WizzAir, with whom I fly regularly, has let me down big time over the years, but for every wpadka there's ten flights where everything works fine.
Years ago a Polish friend described her opinion as "Fly or not, but never by LOT". Then she drove from Poland to the UK, in a Fiat 126P, which was an interesting choice.
ReplyDelete