Now, before I start this segment there are three things I must confess.
1) Those of you expecting a fabulous business class report are going to be sorely disappointed. Not only is this “European Business Class” it is all on ERJs!
2) I don’t do redeyes or early morning flights. Matt REALLY doesn’t do redeyes or early morning flights. Our flight was set to depart Yerevan at 5:45am. Yes, this would be lots of fun, and I admit I fudged a bit. “Oh, it’s early, before 7, like 6 something I think?”
3) Neither of us had flown LOT, so I was kinda excited, Euro business or not, for this. Though, EVN-WAW-LHR-IAD was going to make for a very very long day.
So that said, on with the show! We’d made it to bed somewhat early, but the room was a bit warm and wouldn’t cool down much, so I’m not sure how much sleep we really got. Alarm was set for something like 3:45 if I recall directly, which was a nightmare not to be repeated….at least until next month.
Now, the night before, the hotel had really fudged on the taxi. If you prepay and add it to the hotel bill, it is X. However, we suggest we book you a taxi, and then you negotiate with the driver. We chose this option, and the driver was surprisingly easy to push over at the non-negotiable hour of 4am. Piece of cake, quite a low fare, and we were off to Yerevan Airport.
Check-in was slightly slow, security and immigration were a complete non-event, and soon we were dumped into the duty free area, trying to find the lounge….which eventually we did through a hidden door that led to a hidden elevator, nice going! The lounge was…surprisingly nice! Full array of adult beverages, and enough snacks to keep us occupied at this early hour. Most importantly, it had a great espresso machine which brought me from Coke Zero to Fully Functional in no time. That alone made it nice. I was quite impressed!
Boarding was at departure time, and I think we eventually pushed back on time, but arrived on time, so it’s obvious things are padded a bit. The Warsaw-Yerevan flight is a dreadful 2.5 to 3 hour redeye, so I really felt for the poor souls getting off of it!
LOT FLight 728, Yerevan to Warsaw
5:45 – 6:20, 3 hour time change, 3 hours, 35 minutes gate to Gate
Seats 2A and 2B
ERJ-175, Registration SP-LIA, Manufactured 2006
Pushback was on-time, and honestly there’s very little to say here. The flight was completely full, but we still got a hot entree which was….quesadillas?! For breakfast? Um, ok! First, the cold part of the breakfast:
Next…the quesadillas!
Soon it was time to land in Warsaw. We went through transit security which was a bit of a non-event, and went to the transfer desk to get our boarding passes to London and….nope! She “did not have password, so you wait.” We waited nearly 20 minutes, cutting severely into lounge and caffeine time. However, soon things were sorted, I was re-caffeinating, and it was time to board the even bigger Barbie Jet for the flight to London
LOT FLight 281, Warsaw to London, Heathrow
7:50-9:35, 1 hour time change, 2 hours, 45 minutes gate to Gate
Seats 2C and 2D, switched to 2B and 2D
ERJ-179, Registration SP-LNB, Manufactured 2011
One neat thing about this flight is that the aircraft had only been delivered to LOT 7 days prior, and still had that new aircraft smell. I know, geeky. Again, there is seriously very very little to tell about this flight. Coach was completely full, but of the 8 seats in business, only 5 were occupied, despite the flight showing sold out. Must have been some disconnects.
The crew was great, kept offering drink refills, and offered an eerily familiar looking brekkie:
We arrived on time, got an actual gate with a jetway, and soon I was off to the T1 Star Alliance lounge to shower and await my onward flight on United to Washington Dulles.
So, how was LOT? Honestly, I was dreading 6 hours on ERJs, but it wasn’t that bad. Plenty of room to work with my laptop, adequate food, and friendly staff. If there had been a workable alternative I would have taken it, but all in all, it wasn’t that bad. It was a same day trip back to DC arriving late afternoon so all in all, it was well worth the very mild discomfort.