LOT is to sell Central Wings in order to pay for 787 order

[G-BOAD]

Lot is planing to sell its low cost airline division Central Wings, to the German airline German wings. They also plan to sell the Marriott hotel in Warsaw. This is in order to pay for the order of 787s.

if you know polish you can read the story here:
http://gospodarka.gazeta.pl/gospodarka/ ... 44324.html (http://gospodarka.gazeta.pl/gospodarka/1,33182,3844324.html)

[cancidas]

interesting. shame we have to wait until the 787 to see a new heavy in LO colors, i would have loved to see the 777 in thier scheme. how many 737 are they flying for centralwings now? will the airplanes leave the LO fleet?

[SP-LPB]

There are 8 737's in Centralwings now:

737-300 x3
737-400 x5

Centralwings is having financial difficulties, to say the least. The airplanes are officially subleased from LOT which has them on a long term lease. Sooner or later LOT will get rid of their 737's that are leased. There were speculations last year that LOT would start evaluating the A320 vs. 737NG's as replacements, no mention of that so far. There is constant juggling of CEO's and therefore no serious strategy is being implemented. Swissair (yes Swissair) or precisely the receiver in bankruptcy SAirLines B.V. holds 25.1% of shares in the carrier and they are a constant pain slowing down any talks and negotiations. Another important update in the article is that the state will release 30% of shares in LOT on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.