The first Boeing 737 MAX delivery to LOT Polish Airlines since the aircraft was grounded in 2019 has just arrived.
On October 28, 2022, the aircraft, SP-LVM, flew from Boeing’s plant in Seattle, Washington, to Warsaw, Poland.
Initially, Blue Air, a Romanian airline, was supposed to get the aircraft. The financially precarious Romanian airline, however, stopped flying at the end of September 2022.
Early in October 2022, LOT and lessor Air Lease Corporation came to an agreement for LOT to take over Blue Air’s MAX 8 aircraft. There will be a total of six aircraft arriving in Poland.
The plane marks LOT’s first delivery of a Boeing 737 MAX in almost four years, following the infamous MAX grounding in March 2019.
According to data from Planespotters.net, the Polish airline already has five additional MAXs in its inventory that were delivered between December 2017 and December 2018.
The aircraft was grounded globally in March 2019 as a result of two deadly crashes involving Lion Air flight JT610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302, which together lost 346 people.
The aircraft was ungrounded by the US Federal Aviation Administration in November 2020, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency followed suit in allowing the aircraft to operate passenger-carrying commercial flights in Europe in January 2021.
LOT sued Boeing in October 2021 seeking $250 million in monetary damages as a result of the grounding.
