In the post-1989 era, following the fall of communism in Poland, LOT transitioned to Western aircraft, including the acquisition of Boeing 767 for long-haul routes.

[10][11] Since 2018, LOT has maintained one long-haul route from Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport in Hungary where it operates regularly scheduled flights to Seoul all year round.

When the airline was founded in 1928, Poland's State Treasury had 86% of the shares in the line, with the rest belonging to the Province of Silesia and the city of Poznań.

In 1934, after five years of operating under the LOT name, the airline received new head offices, technical facilities, hangars, workshops, and warehouses located at the new, modern Warsaw Okęcie Airport.

This constituted a move from the airline's previous base at Pole Mokotowskie, as this airport had become impossible to operate safely due it gradually becoming absorbed into Warsaw's outlying urban and residential areas.

[2] That same year, a well-publicised transatlantic test flight from Los Angeles via Buenos Aires, Natal, Dakar to Warsaw, aimed at judging the feasibility of introducing passenger service on the Poland-United States route, was successfully executed.

[12] The airline had carried 218,000 passengers before the services were suspended after the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939 and during the following German occupation of Poland; most of LOT's aircraft were evacuated to Romania, two to Baltic states, and three L-14H to Great Britain.

[18] On 10 March 1945 the Polish government recreated the LOT airline, as a state-owned enterprise (Przedsiębiorstwo Państwowe Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT'), which would mainly fly Soviet-built aircraft, owing to the tensions of the Cold War and Poland being a member of the Warsaw Pact.

[18] In 1946, seven years after service was first suspended, the airline restarted its operations after receiving ten Soviet-built ex-Air Force Lisunov Li-2Ts, then further passenger Li-2Ps and nine Douglas C-47s.

The Antonov An-24 was delivered from April 1966 (20 used, on domestic routes), followed by the first jet airliners Tupolev Tu-134 in November 1968 (which coincided with the opening of a new international terminal at Warsaw's Okęcie Airport).

[19] In 1977[19] the airline's current livery (despite occasional changes, notably in corporate typography) designed by Roman Duszek and Andrzej Zbrożek, with the large 'LOT' inscription in blue on the front fuselage, and a blue tailplane was introduced, the 1929-designed Tadeusz Gronowski logo,[20] however, despite many changes in livery, was kept through the years, and to this day remains the same.

[clarification needed][21] In the autumn of 1981, commercial air traffic in Poland neared collapse in the wake of the communist government's crackdown on dissenters in the country after the rise of the banned 'trade union' dissident Solidarity movement, and some Western airlines suspended their flights to Warsaw.

Tupolev Tu-154 mid-range airliners were acquired, after the withdrawal of Il-18 and Tu-134 aircraft from LOT's fleet in the 1980s, and were deployed successively on most European and Middle East routes.

By 1999 LOT had purchased a number of small Embraer 145 regional jets in order to expand its short-haul fleet, and had, with the approval of the Minister of the State Treasury, begun a process of selling shares to the Swiss company SAirGroup Holding; this then led to the airline's incorporation into the then-nascent Qualiflyer Group.

By 2006 a new base of operations, with the reconstruction of Warsaw Chopin Airport, had opened, thus allowing LOT's full transit airline potential to be developed for the first time.

[24] LOT started new services to Yerevan, Armenia, Beirut, Lebanon, and resumed Tallinn, Estonia, Kaliningrad, Russia, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Bratislava, Slovakia with its newly acquired Embraer aircraft in the summer of 2010.

In 2010 LOT cancelled flights, after 14 years of operation, between Kraków and the US destinations of Chicago and New York City, citing profitability concerns and lack of demand.

On 5 February 2011, the new CEO of LOT, Marcin Piróg, announced that the airline was considering opening services to Baku, Sochi, Stuttgart, Oslo, Gothenburg, Dubai, Kuwait, and Ostrava from its Warsaw hub in the near future.

[27] In 2010/11 LOT announced its new 'East meets West' route expansion policy, which saw the airline add several new Asian destinations to its schedule over the coming years.

The policy aimed to take advantage of LOT's perspective as a transit airline and the substantial passenger growth seen on Europe-Asia flights in recent years.

Additionally, lie-flat seats were made available in business class, and all of the airline's new long-haul aircraft were fitted with Thales personal entertainment systems.

[35] On 24 January 2020, the owner of LOT, the Polish Aviation Group (Polska Grupa Lotnicza or PGL) announced that it would acquire Condor Flugdienst.

[42] In February 2025, LOT announced to end long-haul operations from Budapest, Hungary, from where it currently serves a single route to Seoul by March 2025.

[47] LOT Polish Airlines serves a network of European destinations in addition to flights in Asia, the Middle East, and North America.

This design was intended to retain the tradition and spirit of LOT with no major or radical changes to the livery applied to the airline's aircraft.

The blue nose and broad cheat-line were removed; the 'POLSKIE LINIE LOTNICZE' title on each aircraft's starboard side was replaced with the words 'POLISH AIRLINES'.

The tailplane's design was changed only slightly, with the colours of the traditional encircled crane logo being inverted and the circle becoming a more simple outline ring.

[74] After World War II, the aircraft mostly wore a similar all-natural metal scheme, with the airline name above the window line.

Early versions of this livery also featured thin blue stripes above and below the cheatline and a white tail, with small black crane logo on the fin and medium-size Polish flag on the rudder.

The latter elements were visible in the design of the LOT livery as an area of dark blue under the cockpit windscreen, the long cheat-line painted down the side of the fuselage and the large traditional logo which is emblazoned on the tailplane.