Last year was a big one for the UK’s deportation charter flight programme. From the failed Rwanda plan, to Labour’s attempts to boost ‘removal’ statistics, deportation charters have been constantly in the news. But who is the government deporting on these chartered jets? Which airlines are lining their pockets by inflicting misery? Having obtained data from the Home Office through numerous Freedom of Information requests, Corporate Watch can now reveal what the UK’s 2024 deportation charter programme looked like beyond the headlines.

For analysis of deportation charter flights in previous years, see our reports on 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Key facts:

• At least 3,518 people were deported on 64 charter flights in 2024 (two flights deported to two different countries)
• 10 airlines participated in the flights, including perennial deportation airlines, HiFly, Iberojet, Privilege Style and Titan Airways
• It’s believed to be the first time charter deportations were carried out to Brazil, India and Timor-Leste; and the first time such flights went to Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam after years of hiatus
• It’s also believed to have been the first time charters were used to expel ‘voluntary’ returnees, including women and children
• Overwhelmingly, as in 2023, the charters were used to send ‘foreign national offenders’ to Albania and Romania

A note on terminology: At Corporate Watch, we use the term ‘deportation’ to describe any forced return of someone back to their country of origin, whatever the legal justification, and we avoid the dehumanising term ‘removal’. Although there is technically a legal distinction between ‘removal’ and ‘deportation’, we choose to talk in plain terms unless there is a reason to make this distinction clear.

The destinations

Albania has remained by far the most frequent destination for deportation charters. Of 66 flights in total, 49 flew to Albania at a regular interval of one per week, deporting a total of 2,098 people. Romania was a distant second, with a total of nine flights deporting 357 people to the country.

As we observed in previous years, the majority of people deported on these flights are categorised as ‘foreign national offenders’ (FNOs). FNOs made up nearly 70% of all deportees, excluding those on flights to Brazil and India, where there were only three in total. Various schemes exist to facilitate the deportation of FNOs, like the Early Removal Scheme, Facilitated Return Scheme and Prisoner Transfer Agreements. The government has also recently signed agreements with Albania to make it easier to deport Albanian FNOs, as well as buying the country’s prison service £1.5 million worth of electric vehicles in exchange for receiving Albanian prisoners from the UK. In addition to being easier to deport, the public perception of FNOs provides an incentive for the government to be seen as expelling them en-masse. The Labour government recently published video footage of guards forcing Albanian nationals onto a charter plane (Titan Airway’s flight AWC811 from Liverpool to Tirana on 6th February) in an attempt to ape Trump and score political points against the right-wing opposition.

In a new development, five charter flights were arranged for people who were to be ‘voluntarily’ returned: four to Brazil and one to India. We put voluntarily in scare quotes, as people agreeing to self-deport is a decision usually only taken a last resort, having been unable to build or sustain their lives in the UK due to hostile environment policies. The Observer reported that many Brazilians struggle to access the high-quality legal advice needed to understand their options, while women who experience gender-based violence, and who may be trapped by an abusive partner with the right to remain in the UK, were identified as being especially vulnerable. Of the 886 people sent to Brazil, 295 were women and 129 were children. These facts were not included in the Labour government’s bragging press release stating it “remove[d] the highest number of illegal migrants in 5 years”. It only referenced the Brazil flights to say they had been “the biggest ever returns flights in the UK’s history, carrying more than 800 people”.

In addition to the Brazil flights, after taking office the Labour government increased its use of deportation charters to send people to Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. Besides Timor-Leste, these countries have previously received deportation charters, but not for years. It could be that these flights were originally intended by the Conservatives to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, but then quickly “replaced… with actual flights to return people who have no right to stay to their home countries instead” by the new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. These were some of the most violent deportation charters of the year: on the flight to Ghana and Nigeria (17th October, flight USY411 operated by German charter airline USC) there were eight use of force incidents reported by Mitie guards, while there were six reported on the flight to Pakistan (10th December, flight PVG6759 operated by notorious Spanish deportation profiteer Privilege Style).

The airlines

The airlines profiting most from the UK’s deportation charter programme remain familiar. Titan Airways has been one of the Home Office’s closest partners for well over a decade, and flew more than twice as many deportation flights as any other airline last year. The tabloid press claimed that the Titan flight to Albania for 47 people on 6th February cost £1 million based on a 2023 estimate of £22,000 per deportee. Although there was no data on the costs of each flight in 2024, previous Corporate Watch research put the average cost per flight at around £180,000 in 2022 (excluding escort costs), so it is reasonable to infer that Titan made millions from its 28 mass expulsions last year.

After Titan came the expected mix of Iberian charter airlines which have been frequent Home Office collaborators in recent years: AlbaStar, EuroAtlantic, HiFly, Privilege Style and Iberojet. Although not flying as many deportations this year, these companies still cashed in where they could and provided many of the lucrative long-haul flights to countries like Brazil, Pakistan and Vietnam (after HiFly flight 3L961 flew 46 people to Vietnam, it appears Aero Dili, the flag carrier of Timor-Leste, came to collect the Timorese passengers and bring them to the island). In addition to the above, other airlines which are heavily involved in Europe’s Frontex-coordinated charters also worked for the UK Home Office. For instance, the Dutch branch of Turkish holiday airline, Corendon, also flew deportations to Albania, while AirTanker did one to Romania.

One question which stills remains unanswered is which airline agreed to last year’s scheduled, then cancelled, deportation flights to Rwanda? Sustained campaigning against Privilege Style and 13,000 letters sent to AirTanker got both companies to publicly state they would not participate in the government’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, and encouraged many other airlines to say the same. However, the fact that a Rwanda charter was still scheduled means the Home Office found one company which was willing to help implement its unlawful scheme. Could it have been USC or Ascend Airways, which both entered the UK market for the first time in 2024? USC is a tiny German airline (with just two, old planes), founded in 2020, which carried out the particularly violent Nigeria and Ghana charter. Ascend Airways is a UK-based firm which leases planes to other carriers. It is owned by Lithuania’s richest person, Gediminas Žiemelis, and is part of Avia Solutions Group, an Irish holding company that owns a range of airlines and aircraft leasing companies. For more on the other companies involved, see our 2023 report.

Weekly Home Office propaganda posts on X

Resisting fascist flights

Each week on social media, the government updates the number of migrants it has deported from the UK since it assumed office. As we write, it stands at 18,987 people – and these are increasingly accompanied by images of deportees being forced onto the planes. The Home Office has also just launched a search for a new supplier to drive its deportation charter flights programme for the next seven years, at a cost of up to £392 million, in what is understood to be a retendering of the contract previously held by Air Partner. With mass deportations being the cornerstone of the emerging fascist politics across Europe and the US, and with so many companies standing to gain along the way, without a strong pushback we can expect a continued growth in mass deportations from the UK.

To make these deportations possible, the Home Office is ramping up the raids, with a nearly 40% increase in workplace checks and raids over the past six months on the previous year. But it’s in our communities that we have strength. Time and again ordinary people have disrupted the deportations through the a combination of determined community outreach efforts and gutsy direct action. To organise against the round-ups, anti-raids groups around the country are in need of volunteers. Check out Camden Anti Raids, Haringey Anti Raids, Southwark and Lambeth Anti Raids, Bristol Anti Raids and Brighton Anti Raids for practical things we can do to put a spanner in the works of the deportation machine.

The full data set can be downloaded here.