LOT: Connecting East and West in Poland

Abstract

The Polish national airline LOT resumed activities almost eighteen months earlier than its rivals in western Europe. A temporary operations base was established in 1944 in Lublin in central eastern Poland, the seat of the Moscow-controlled Polish Committee that was to play a major role in governing the Soviet-liberated zones of the country. In August 1944 LOT started two domestic services: from Lublin north to Bialystok, and south to Rzeszów and Przemyśl. Despite the priority given to mail services in cooperation with the civil aviation division of the Military Aircraft Command, LOT’s two single-engined Polikarpov Po-2 aerial taxi biplanes managed to carry 4811 passengers before the end of 1944. However, it was only on 16 March 1945, with the end of military control over its operations, that LOT could formally recommence its activities.