If you are about to fly on LOT Polish Airlines’ short-haul European flight, the odds are that you will find yourself on one of its Embraer aircraft.
That was also the case with my flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw which was operated by one of the airline’s Embraer EMB-195s. Continue reading this review to see what the business class flight was like.
Boarding a LOT Polish Airlines Embraer EMB-195
Luckily, I was able to check my bags through from Vienna all the way to Singapore even though my flights to Copenhagen was on a separate ticket. As such, immediately after arriving in Copenhagen, I went to SAS Scandinavian Airlines’ business class lounge.
I skipped visiting the two Priority Pass lounges in Copenhagen airport’s terminal 2 as I will have a chance to visit those when flying the return portion of this ticket in April.
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I left the lounge about ten minutes before the scheduled boarding time of 10:55AM, and headed to the flight’s departure gate, A15.
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Boarding started at 11:05AM with business class and Star Alliance Gold passengers being invited to board first.
Before settling in my seat 2A, I took some photos of the cabin.
The aircraft was equipped with leather seats in a “2-2” configuration. And, like on most European airlines, business class seat was just an economy class seat with the seat next to it blocked.
Interestingly, though, the first five rows were “reserved” for business class and were upholstered by a differently colored leather than the rows behind them.
The seat was fairly comfortable, and given that I was in a bulkhead row, legroom was not a problem. I was also surprised by how large the windows were.

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Departing Copenhagen Onboard LOT Flight 464
Boarding was completed at 11:12AM, and while economy class was almost full, I was the only passenger in business class.
A couple of minutes after boarding was completed, one of the four flight attendants came to offer me a wafer. Around the same time, the captain welcomed us onboard through the PA and mentioned that we were expecting to be in the air for one hour and five minutes.

At 11:15AM, the crew closed the aircraft door, and then started the safety demonstration.
We were pushed back at 11:23AM – two minutes ahead of schedule – and the cockpit crew started the aircraft’s engine two minutes later. Another two minutes later, we started taxiing to the active runway.
We took off from runway 22R at 11:32AM.

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LOT Polish Airlines Short-Haul Business Class Meal
A couple of minutes after take-off, one of the flight attendants made an announcement that we would be reaching our cruising altitude soon at which point the service would begin. She also mentioned that economy class passengers would receive a complimentary coffee, tea, and a sweet snack (I assume it was the same one I received upon boarding).
The seatbelt signs were switched off at 11:36AM – just four minutes after take-off – at which point the curtain between business and economy class was closed and the service begun.
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Another two minutes later, I was served my meal.
Given that the flight was just an hour long, it was a small cold meal with two plates. One containing meat cuts with asparagus and the other a chicken salad. Besides that, there was also a Lindt chocolate ball. Bread and drinks were served separately as well.
Both of the dishes were fairly tasty, and once I finished the meal, it was promptly cleaned by one of the crew members.


Landing at Warsaw Airport
Once I was done with the meal, there were still forty or so minutes left in the flight, so I continued reading Flying High, Tony Fernandes’ memoir.

We started descending at 12:14PM, and less than a minute later, the seatbelt signs were switched back on.
The pilots lowered the landing gear at 12:33PM, and at 12:35PM, we touched down on Warsaw airport’s runway 11.

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We reached our parking spot at 12:38PM – seven minutes ahead of schedule.
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LOT Polish Airlines EMB-195 Business Class Summary
The flight was more or less exactly what I expected it to be.
The seats were good enough for the short one-hour flight (although it would be, of course, nice if European airlines started installing real business class seats) and the breakfast was tasty and more than sufficient.
That said, if it wasn’t part of a longer ticket, I would certainly not book this (or any other intra-European flight) in business class.
2 thoughts on “Review: LOT Polish Airlines EMB-195 Business Class from Copenhagen to Warsaw”
It is a pity that LOT, like most other European airlines, has stoped serving meals in economy class on short and medium range European routes. These are peanut moneys compared to the total flight price, but such “saving” makes an impression of “cheap airline”. Moreover, for unknown reason and contrary to its own advertisement, LOT is unable to sell the meal on line before the flight, if the ticket has a code-sharing, constitutes a part of the longer trip and was bought from outside travel agent. Their computerized system is not flexible enough to handle such a “difficult” problem.
Eat something before the flight, these are 1 or 2 hour flights for god’s sake.