Chartered jet flew to France in January carrying passenger with complex physical medical needs
Daily Telegraph 11/09/26
The Home Office used a chartered passenger jet to deport a single migrant to France at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer, The Telegraph can reveal.
The flight, in January this year, was the only flight consisting of a single migrant, although there was another passenger jet chartered to deport eight migrants to Poland in June last year.
The flights were among 74 planes chartered by the Home Office during a one-year period to deport foreign offenders and illegal migrants at an average cost of £186,000 per flight, according to Home Office data.
During the year from Feb 1, 2025 to Jan 31 this year, a total of 2,835 migrants were flown out of the UK at a total cost of £13.8m, equivalent to nearly £5,000 per person.
The single-migrant plane was chartered to fly on Jan 7 this year. It is understood the migrant had complex physical medical needs.
The plane was originally scheduled to take migrants to France under the “one in, one out” scheme, in which France accepts Channel migrants in return for sending a similar number of legitimate asylum seekers to the UK.
However, Home Office officials had to pull these migrants off the flight for undisclosed reasons, so it was decided to use it for the migrant with medical needs. Sources indicated the flight would otherwise have been wasted without any migrants being flown out under the charter agreement.
‘System is not running efficiently’
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “The cost of these flights equates to £4,485 per migrant deported, which means the system is not running efficiently. They should be getting far more migrants deported for this cost. You can fly on scheduled flights for a fraction of this cost.
“It is also noticeable that countries with high numbers of illegal immigrants and criminals do not feature at all. Where are countries like Jamaica, Nigeria or Iraq on this list? There are lots of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants from countries like those who need to be deported as well.”
The data do not include scheduled commercial flights that are also used to deport migrants. It also does not include the cost of security officers. They fly with the migrants and foreign offenders back to their home countries to prevent them from disrupting flights and ensure they are delivered safely to their destinations.
A Home Office spokesman said: “More than 80,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals have been returned since the July 2024 election, a 41 per cent increase.
“We will always seek to remove foreign criminals and other immigration offenders at the earliest possible opportunity.”
The country with the biggest number of charter flights was Albania, with 42 planes hired to take 1,810 illegal migrants and foreign offenders back to their homeland.
On a pro-rata cost, that equates to the Home Office spending up to £7.8m on chartered jets to deport them. The biggest single chartered deportation flight took 74 migrants to Albania, with which the UK has signed a series of return agreements, including a prisoner transfer deal.
Albanians accounted for five times the number of the next biggest deportation nation, Romania, which had 329 removed on seven flights.
France accounted for more flights – 14 during the year – but fewer migrants, at 282. They were followed by three flights to India (carrying 136), two flights to Nigeria and Ghana (95), two flights to France and Albania (72), one to Pakistan (35), one to Pakistan and Bangladesh (34), one to Vietnam (34) and one to Poland (eight).
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