What is a repatriation flight, and is it what you need

“Repatriation flight” is one of those phrases that means three different things, and searching for it after a death brings up the two that do not apply. This guide sorts them out, explains how the one that does apply actually works, and says why for most families in Europe it is not the answer.

The three things the phrase means

An evacuation charter. When a government flies its citizens home from a country in crisis, a war, a pandemic, a collapsed airline, the aircraft is called a repatriation flight. These are for the living, they are organised by the Foreign Office, and they have nothing to do with a death.

A medical repatriation. When someone is ill or injured abroad and is flown home for treatment, on a scheduled flight with a medical escort or on an air ambulance, that is medical repatriation. It is paid for by travel insurance, arranged by the insurer’s assistance company, and the companies that do it are listed on GOV.UK. It is also for the living.

A person who has died, travelling by air. This is the one that applies after a death, and it is not a flight in the sense of the other two. There is no aircraft chartered for the purpose. Your loved one travels in a sealed coffin in the hold of a scheduled passenger or freight flight, booked through the airline’s cargo agent by a funeral director or a repatriation company.

How a person who has died travels by air

The coffin is prepared to the airline’s standard, which is stricter than the road standard because the hold is pressurised and the people handling the coffin do not know what is inside beyond the label. The funeral director at the departure end books cargo space through the airline’s agent, attaches the documents, the death certificate, the embalming and coffin certificates, the coroner’s or the local authority’s permit and any consular document, and delivers the coffin to the cargo terminal. At the destination a funeral director collects it from the cargo terminal with the same documents.

The family can fly on the same aircraft as passengers, and some do, but the airline treats the two bookings as unrelated, and there is no access to the hold at any point. The airline sets the price by weight and by route, and sets the schedule, which on a busy route is daily and on a thin one may be twice a week.

Why most European repatriations are not a flight

For anywhere in mainland Europe, we take your loved one home by road, in our own vehicle, with the same two people from our chapel of rest to the funeral director at the other end. It is cheaper than air, it has no cargo schedule to wait for, and the coffin is handled by nobody but us. Air is for the rest of the world, for islands, and for the handful of countries whose rules require it. By road or by air sets out where the line falls and why.

So if you have been searching for a repatriation flight for a destination in Europe, the likelier answer is a vehicle, and the question to ask any company is not which flight but which route.

If the insurer is arranging it

A travel insurer’s assistance company will usually say it is arranging the repatriation, and it usually means booking cargo space on a scheduled flight through its own contractor. That is a perfectly good repatriation, and for a long-haul destination it is the only kind. For a European one, it is worth asking whether the insurer will accept a road repatriation from a company the family nominates, because some will, and the answer changes what your loved one goes through. Does travel insurance cover repatriation explains how that conversation goes.

Who pays for a repatriation flight

Nobody pays for a flight as such; the family, or the insurer, or the estate, pays for the repatriation, of which the airline’s cargo charge is one line. How much does repatriation cost from the UK has the estimated bands, and air is why the long-haul bands start where they do. Every figure is an estimate until we know the case, and the written quote is the one on the invoice.

For the whole of what a repatriation involves, flight or not, repatriation, step by step is the place to start.