Henryk Zimakowski: When will LOT regain self-financing?

In less than four years, LOT Polish Airlines will celebrate its centenary. It has had its share of ups and downs, but its greatest challenges, including the loss of almost all of its assets, earned during the communist era, occurred during the failed privatization process initiated in 2000 and ingloriously ended with its return to the state in 2014.

In the Polish People's Republic, the state-owned enterprise PLL LOT, in addition to its current transport operations, also conducted ancillary activities: hotel services ([[50-percent||50 percent||editorial convention||According to the rules, the abbreviation "percent" is written after a space, not with a hyphen.]) capital share in the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw), aircraft technical maintenance, airport passenger check-in, air cargo handling, catering production, aircraft fuel sales, and an extensive in-house airline ticket sales network. LOT's management – ​​now under the ownership supervision of the Ministry of Privatization and the Ministry of the State Treasury (1991-2015) – sold all ancillary activities to finance the growing unprofitable transport operations, and lost most of the company's assets.