Fifty years, well with a six year interruption, was a long time for an airline to last. It was not the first Polish airline rather a merger of two former airlines under government control. This continuous government ownership has allowed LOT to have now lasted over 90 years when so many other countries lost their flagship airline. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist,
The stamp makers made some interesting plane choices for the stamp. The airline started out with German and Dutch airliners but the stamp chose to feature the one Polish made airliner the airline used in it’s first decade. Understandable, but the 1979 chosen aircraft was a Soviet made airplane. LOT then operated Polish made small turboprops but wanted to show off a jet. The LOT emblem has remained unchanged throughout and you can barely make it out on both planes. I would have liked to see it more prominent.
Todays stamp is issue A714, a 6.9 Zloty stamp issued by Poland on January 2nd, 1979. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.
LOT formed in 1929 in a merger between the former Aerolot and Aero Polish airlines. The national government held an 86% stake with the rest owned by the city of Poznan and the province of Silesia. The new emblem that is still in use was the result of a national design competition won by artist Tadeasz Goronowski. The first year saw the first international service to Vienna. The first airliners were Fokker Trimotors and Junkers F.13. In 1933 there was a competition to replace the F.13 that was one by the locally made PWS 24. LOT was the only customer for the PWS 24 and only used them until 1937 when they were passed to the Polish Air Force as staff transport. One of the 11 built evacuated to Romania in 1939 where it was briefly used by the then Romanian flagship airline LARES.
In early 1945 LOT was reformed completely under the new national government and had a fleet of DC3s some of which were the Soviet copy. The first jets did not come into service until 1968 in the form of the Tupolev TU-134. The later TU-154 featured on the stamp has a bad place in Polish history. Much later in 2010 a VIP transport TU-154 of the Polish Air Force crashed killing many Polish dignataries traveling to the site of the 1939 Soviet Kazarin Forest massacre of young Polish cadets. There weren’t many old Soviet airliners still operating in Poland in 2010 so the irony was not lost. Since 2010 the Polish Air Force has allowed another TU-154 to rust in peace at Minsk airport.
In 1989 the airline began to convert to western airliners including the Boeing 767. The airline had high hopes for new direct service between Warsaw and Krakow and the midwestern American cities that once hosted large Polish communities. These mostly didn’t pan out. The airline has also suffered from Poland’s poor relations with Russia complicating flights to China. On fairly bright spot financially is the otherwise rare service it offers to Hanoi in Vietnam. The airline has so far avoided being privatized but came close with negotiations a few years back with Turkish Airways. The airline currently has 98 planes serving 120 destinations.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast T. G. the logo designor. He is of course long gone but his work is still viewed daily in 120 destinations. Not a bad legacy. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.