Dlaczego nie Polska?
August 26, 2026
Of late, U.S. airlines have embarked on a flurry of international expansion. United, in particular, has been throwing darts at the map, moving into markets (Split, Kaohsiung, Ulaanbataar) many Americans have never heard of.
Yet one destination continues to remain conspicuously absent: Poland.
No U.S. carrier flies to Poland. Nor has any American carrier served Poland since Delta flew to Warsaw in the early 1990s, after its takeover of Pan Am’s European network. The city was dropped shortly thereafter.
Why? This isn’t a trick question. I don’t know the answer. Surely it’s odd. Not only are there millions of Polish-Americans, but the largest community of them lives in and around Chicago, a major hub for both American Airlines and United. Polish carrier LOT, meanwhile, has flown to both O’Hare and JFK for decades. We compete with foreign carriers on hundreds of routes; why not this one?
Is it a political thing? Is there not enough premium fare traffic to warrant such a flight?
A LOT Boeing 787 at New York’s JFK Airport.
The latter would seem a likely reason, but many of the recently unveiled routes are to lower-yield leisure markets. Surely Warsaw, or a summer route to Krakow, could bring in as much revenue as Sardinia or Tenerife or Dubrovnik, one would think.
American Airlines did announce a Chicago-Warsaw flight just before COVID hit. The launch was put on hold, then the whole idea was scrapped.
The Israeli carrier El Al sometimes operates charters from JFK to the Polish city of Katowice. My guess is that these are remembrance tours of some kind, as the Auschwitz-Birkenau site is nearby to there.
While were at it, what other “missing routes” are you there? Can you name another city-pair that seemingly should have regular service, but for whatever reasons doesn’t?
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18 Responses to “Dlaczego nie Polska?”
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Thirty years ago I was trying to file a flight plan to fly my Metroliner out of Warsaw but it kept getting rejected. A LOT pilot saw how sad/angry I was and offered to help. If it wasn’t for him I’m still be there.
Seems unthinkable now, but I lived in Portugal in the 80s and 90s, and flights from Boston to Lisbon ended in 1994. Ted Kennedy lobbied to prevent this, but I started flying BA to London then Boston. For a short time, Continental picked up the slack. And sometimes I took charters to Newark. Eventually, as we know, Lisbon became a popular destination. I attribute much of this to David Neeleman’s tenure at TAP, when he introduced the Portugal Stopover program. As founder of Jet Blue, he knew about marketing. Nowadays many airlines fly to Lisbon from Boston.
I’m also amazed there’s no DTW- Milan with the auto industry
Since my wife’s family is Italian, I’m always amazed that there aren’t any flights from anywhere west of Chicago to Milan, and even that flight is seasonal. Milan is a great jumping off point but it’s tough to get there
SEA to anywhere in India is a crazy miss. Our economic integration with India is deep and we have two hubs, but it’s 30 hours to get there. Alaska had planned Hyderabad pre-pandemic. I could sure use Bangalore or Dehli. Air India’s US flights are legally limited which likely contributes in some way.
While were at it, I decided Anchorage and nice places such as Bermuda or Lisbon, neither of which have been annexed by US so far. Certainly not Anchorage and Cincinnati or Rockford, places the logistics companies crave. Solved.
ROI. Costs less for US majors to code-share with LOT than to establish a physical presence in Warsaw. Patrick the Moderator will get all upset and stuff, but that’s just the way it is. Solved.
Detroit-Barcelona. C’mon, Delta. You can do it!
MSP to Scandinavian countries is not well served. In the late nineties Northwest flew to Oslo, but only for one year. Delta currently has a 3 times per week MSP to CPH but that’s it.
We have 1-3 flights a day to AMS, with fairly easy KLM connections, but a non-stop to Stockholm or Oslo would be nice.
With all of the Japanese car manufacturers in and around Ohio plus numerous global companies like P&G, why isn’t there at least one direct flight per week from either CVG or CMH to somewhere in Asia?
CVG has almost daily nonstop flights to London with BA and Paris with Delta. I know the distance is greater, but it seems that a once weekly Asia flight would be supported by these business and leisure travelers.
If United wants to be a flag carrier wouldn’t a rout like this make sense? I mean if they can make Mongolia work surely they can make this work once a week.
I’m guessing it’s a combination of three factors: limited slots available, geography, having to compete with a flag carrier. When I flew out of Krakow, I was struck by how small and bursting at the seams the airport felt, especially for such a major city and tourist destination. Looking at Warsaw Chopin, it’s still a single terminal single* runway operation. There may simply not be sufficient slots available to handle sufficient international flights to make the investment worthwhile.
*ok, it has two which cross at about 30 degrees angle, but I don’t think they permit simultaneous operation
On geography, warsaw and krakow are situated quite easterly. For most of poland’s cities, it makes more sense to change planes in Frankfurt, Berlin, or Munich for the final leg than to route through a poland international airport.
Add the impedance of going up against a flag carrier which started operations in the 1920s and non-trivial polish national pride, and non-stops may not be a great investment for a US carrier.
I would imagine as US carriers stock up on even more A321XLRs, such routes could become more popular.
Boston-Casablanca
Boston-Singapore (but route may be too far)
Royal Air Maroc ran a Boston-Casablanca flight for a little while — our first and only nonstop to the African continent. It was discontinued during COVID and never brought back.
Thinking about my old hometown airport Boston-Logan…I am surprised that by now there is no non-stop flight to India or to Taiwan. Given the huge technology, biomedical, and educational sectors located in Boston, as well as the huge diasporas from these countries, it seems these destinations could support non-stop flights. I realize the Gulf carriers carry the bulk of the traffic to India, but today’s aircraft like the 787 and A350 make these routes feasible economically on a non-stop basis.
Neither one of these is out of the question. The big problem in BOS right now is terminal E, which has zero room for additional flights.
Maybe no US airlines fly to Poland because LOT is already servicing this market and so United (Star Alliance member with LOT) can just codeshare instead of flying their own planes to Warsaw and Krakow?
Fresno or Bakersfield to Portugal (Lisbon maybe) considering how many “Porta-gees” there are in the southern Central Valley?
LAX-India (I know how much you love Mumbai).
Those are two off the top of my head.
Also unrelated, but you would probably know as well as anyone. But why is the FAT-PHX route vectored the way it is? Go “replay” some of the flights and you’ll see what I mean. From FAT, it goes up northeast over the Sierras, down along the Nevada desert, almost over LAS, and into PHX from the north. It’s a very circuitous routing.
Wouldn’t a route that generally follows CA and AZ Highways 99/58/40/17 make more sense?