LOT Polish Airlines (LO, Warsaw Chopin) CEO Sebastian Mikosz, said during CAPA’s Airlines in Transition Conference late last month that his airline is still in the hunt for a strategic partner.

According to Mikosz, partnering a larger carrier would allow LOT to free itself from the shackles of state ownership and the associated problems of political interference that it brings. He said that while state-sponsorship allowed an airline to stay afloat through tough times, the relatively meagre allocations did not allow an airline to fully grow and thus tap its full potential.

In 2013, government amended a law which stipulated that it must own no less than a 51% stake in the national carrier thereby paving the way for private players to invest in the carrier.

In terms of its performance, the airline, in October last year, deferred accepting a second tranche of PLN381 million (USD113.68 million) in EC-sanctioned state aid on the back of a strong recovery. LOT was originally given the okay by Brussels in July 2014 to source a total of PLN804 million (USD268.1 million) in state funding on condition it undertakes a hefty restructuring programme involving staff, fleet and network cutbacks.

Since 2012, various international operators have reportedly expressed an interest in partnering the Polish national carrier among them Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International), Air Berlin (1991) (Berlin Tegel), British Airways (BA, London Heathrow), Singapore Airlines (SQ, Singapore Changi), Turkish Airlines (TK, Istanbul Airport), Norwegian (Oslo Gardermoen), Avianca (Bogotá) (whose majority owner, Germán Efromovich, holds Polish citizenship by virtue of his Polish-Jewish ancestry), and Etihad Airways (EY, Abu Dhabi International).