aster

My question might sound odd, but if you bid the minimum and there are emply seats in biz... are you GUARANTEED to have the bid accepted or could they just decide to fly the empty seat instead?

I'm asking because on each and every flight so far they have announced onboard that upgrades are available... so either there were ZERO bids pending at the minimum amount... or they were ignored in the hope that someone will pay more to upgrade onboard after take-off.

Not sure what to make of all this...

oliver2002

The bidding thing is handled by Plusgrade, who seems to be in contact with RM but works on their own logic. About 72-48h before departure PG bows out of the process and the carrier has no information on the bids at all. RM handles all the advance waitlists place the conventional way and on the day of departure the duty manager tries his/her own luck at optimising revenue.

Concerto

A response finally came about this. My friend, who is a respected violinist, is quite angry with the response and what she said about it is not printable here (otherwise Oliver will have to lock me up!). They basically said that it was her responsibility to be at the gate on time. They said that the minimum connecting time requirement was met and it was possible to make the connection for the next flight (LO417). The responsibility to be at the boarding gate on time, rests with the passengers, to quote their words. Do they not keep records of delays and missed connections, or are they so dumb that they lie like this?

iLied

Concerto

I have no idea. But as I am a third person in all of this I will just have to leave her to sort it out. Or let it go, which is what I advised her to do. The thing with travel is, it's great when everything works as it should. But when things go wrong even your favourite travel provider can let you down badly in ways you can not imagine.

I am no lover of Deutsche Bahn, but yesterday they carried me from Basel Bad to Duisburg on what was a really great trip, comfortable in 2nd class and bang on time, even going through Köln Hbf. This, despite upheaval caused by a train accident (derailment) in Basel SBB station. Other times, the DB have let me down so badly I swore I would never travel with them again. I think the thing with most of us here is that we are fairly experienced travellers and can mostly ride the storms out, not to mention we have this community to lean on in times of need. Having said that, I am not in a massive hurry to buy tickets with LOT Polish Airlines, unless I need to travel to Poland (which I don't right now). But I feel the same way about the whole Lufthansa Group: I think all the airlines have reached more or less the same level of crapification.

iLied

N1003U

The algorithm is all very mysterious to me as well. In my past 20 LO segments Y+ (long-haul), I have bid 5 times, bid was accepted twice (never with a minimum bid, rather in the $550-600 range), been OPUPed once (in that case, Y was severely oversold ex-WAW due to rerouting via ORD of some impacted by an EWR cancellation). How bids are even processed/accepted is to me a mystery. On the other hand, I try not to lose much sleep thinking about it. Suspect if they are announcing on-board, there are few other takers (including non-revs) for many open seats.

I am not sure I have enough experience with the upgrade-bidding system to have a good handle on how it works. I won't find out too soon, either, as my next couple of trips are back with LH.

Edit: as business fares on the route I typically fly start around USD1000/PLN4000 per segment on a return ticket (and can be had usually for under USD1500/PLN6000), it makes little sense for me to bid more than about USD600/PLN2400 when I have already paid about USD600 for the Y+ segment, so I am not at all sure what kind of suckers LO is after here.

Big_Foot

from my experience (we only flew LOT once in business), they are horrible. Absolutely awful.
Not only their service on board is horrendous, but we also did complain and requested a refund -
there was no lounge at Newark, food was cold and horrible etc, etc - they denied even though
it was a human responding - in a typical awful Polish way - not a robo-email.
We will never ever touch this garbage airline again.

TPJ

You can say many things about LO, but *A carriers have 2 lounges at EWR Terminal B and I think LO uses Art & Lounge that is before security. Have you been denied access to any of these lounges? LH, SK, Art & Lounge?

Requesting refund because food was cold? Is it a joke?, Have you asked a F/A to re-heat it?

You paid to be transported from point A to point B and asking for a refund because food was cold is IMHO fairly weird....

FinsToTheLeft

MikeInMass

My elderly parents are planning to travel NYC-KSC to visit family. A return flight KSC-WAW-JFK makes sense for them, but the connection from LO510 to LO26 is only 45 minutes. Any impressions of how smooth or rough the misconnect experience on LO would be for two Americans with no Polish? I assume a misconnect would most likely mean they'd have to spend the night in Warsaw? Thanks for any thoughts.

TPJ

Hi Mike,

No worries... IMHO WAW is one of Europe's most efficient airports (together with MUC/VIE/HEL). They just need to clear Immigration and are almost done. I say 'almost' as now there are security interviews for US flights (Trump's nonsense - thank you POTUS) just after the Immigration. They need to identify themselves to the agent (on the left after Immigration).

If they miss a connection, they will enjoy a night in WAW courtesy of LO. No exceptions - EU law requires carrier to always provide assistance - even if the reason for delay is weather. Last time I was given a hotel voucher, taxi voucher TO the hotel (was told to use the hotel shuttle for the return) and meal vouchers. Hotel was OK'sh but food they served was good.

There is also a morning KSC-WAW flight - just in case they might be willing to have a longer layover and go to the city. But this might make their journey too long... Lack of Polish is not a problem. There is a surprisingly good number of people in WAW who can communicate in fairly good English.

Fabo.sk

I wouldn't be so quick to identify this a non-issue, as I guess it depends also on when they travel?
If what was going on with passport control last summer is anything like seasonal, I would not want to be the one betting on 45 minutes being enough.

Other than this, they have two options essentially, one of which is to take the early morning flight out of KSC, and then have a lot more time (5-10 hours) but getting up before 4 to get to the airport on time...
Maybe try and see if you can get them on KSC-WAW-EWR on the dates when the later departs at 17:30 giving a healthy 1:30 connection.

MikeInMass

Yes, my mom is the opposite of an early bird and blanched at the thought of getting up before 4am to get to the airport after what will probably be a late final night in town. And unfortunately they can't change their return day.

I think I will psych them up to expect a night in Warsaw on the way home, hardly a calamity if I can get them into the proper frame of mind...!

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts!

Agneisse

Mentally prepare them for the possibility of an extended trip, and you should be fine. I had a similar situation last year, and Warsaw is pretty decent for a night actually (good food, cake, beer, enough English around, nice people, and museums are probably interesting although I didn't go).