Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – LOT, Poland’s flag carrier, which is currently making decision concerning its long-haul fleet, is also going to buy planes for shorted routes, i.e. European. “A team of LOT and Centralwings (LOT’s low-cost carrier) employees has been founded to evaluate what the group needs”, Leszek Chorzewski, LOT CEO said. LOT refuses to give details. “LOT has told Airbus that it has launched the project of evaluation of short-haul planes exchange with capacity over 130 seats. It comprises the needs of LOT and its subsidiary Centralwings. According to the project, the fleet would be changed in the beginning of 2007. Airbus and LOT teams are to start talks on August 22nd-26th. Therefore, LOT asked Airubs for current data for A-320 planes”, “Puls Biznesu” source said.
Centralwings has also started preparations to change the fleet. “A team of specialists has started works over a verified development plan for Centrawings. We hope our supervisory board will approve of it. Initially, we planned to increase the fleet by two planes a year. Due to dynamic growth of low-cost airlines in Poland, we want to develop faster in upcoming years. The sixth plane is to be implemented in December”, Piotr Kociolek, Centralwings CEO said.
Meanwhile, LOT is still to make decision concerning its long-haul fleet. The management chose between the Airbus A-350 and Boeing B 787. In April it recommended to buy the U.S. craft. Then, an evaluation team approved of the choice on July 11th. Now it is the supervisory board who should let the management finalise the transaction. The board has not met yet. The meeting scheduled on August 2nd was cancelled, the next one was not planned. Marek Grabarek, LOT’s CEO assured that on September 15th, the final decision will be made.
Despite growing competition, LOT managed to increase the number of passengers. In the first half of the 2004, the airline had 1.83m of passengers, while in 2005 – 1.76m in LOT plus 0.4m in Centralwings (data from November till July). In the first half of the year, LOT’s sales amounted to PLN 1.280m, down from PLN 1.435m in 2004, operating income rose to PLN 18.0m from an operating loss of 2.9m a year earlier, while net income grew to PLN 72.6 from PLN 9.8m in the same period of 2004. The fleet of LOT includes, among others, B-767-300 (four aircraft), B 767-200 (two aircraft), B 737-400 (seven aircraft, three of them in Centralwings), B 737-500 (six aircraft) and B 737-300 (2 aircraft, both in Centralwings).