Today, 30 March 2023, 30 years have passed since LOT Polish Airlines has been operating at Riga Airport and offering passengers a regular connection to the Polish capital of Warsaw. LOT operated the first direct flight from Riga Airport to Warsaw on 30 March 1993, and this summer the carrier plans to operate 14 flights weekly.
In the 30 years of cooperation, LOT has continuously connected Latvia with Poland and from its base airport in Warsaw with the whole world. "We are pleased that in the summer season of the anniversary year, LOT will increase the number of seats on the Riga–Warsaw route – this shows the growing passenger interest and the high quality of LOT's flight service," says Laila Odiņa, Chairperson of the Board of Riga Airport.
The airline's network of routes covers more than 100 destinations, it carries around nine million passengers annually. LOT is currently among the oldest operating airlines in the world – the airline made its first passenger flight in 1929. The cooperation with Latvia for the LOT Polish Airlines is also much longer, as the airline started its first regular flights on the route Warsaw–Vilnius–Riga–Tallinn (at that time Reval) –Warsaw back in August 1932 with the then modern "Fokker" aircraft, which had eight passenger seats, and operated these flights three times a week until 1 September 1939. At that time, flights to Riga took place to Spilve Airport.
Krzysztof Moczulski, Spokesperson and Director of the Communications Office at LOT Polish Airlines:
We are celebrating the round 30th anniversary of the direct connection from the capital of Poland to the capital of Latvia. On this occasion, I would like to remind that in 2022 we celebrated the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Baltic Line (Warsaw-Vilnius-Riga-Tallinn), and this means that LOT has been present in Riga almost since its beginnings. Passengers want to fly on this route - to use our connecting hub in Warsaw, to discover the charms of walking along the Vistula River or in Riga's Old Town. Between 2019 and the end of February 2023, we carried nearly 250,000 passengers on the route to and from Riga, including nearly 120,000 in 2019. I am convinced that the next months and years of our cooperation will bring equally positive results.