Service · Getting home
Repatriation is the journey from a hospital abroad to a hospital at home — arranged so that care never lapses, the family is never guessing, and the receiving team knows exactly what is arriving.
Service · Getting home
Being treated well abroad and being treated at home are not the same thing. Continuity of care, language, insurance and rehabilitation all sit inside a patient's own healthcare system, and for a serious illness or injury that system is usually where recovery actually happens.
Medical repatriation closes that gap. It moves a patient from the facility that stabilised them to the facility that will treat them, without interrupting monitoring, medication or clinical oversight along the way.
It is not a way to change destination. A repatriation flight returns a member to their home country or designated home airport for continued treatment. It does not cover transport to an alternate holiday destination, and it does not apply to a condition that existed before the trip began — the medical event has to have occurred while travelling, and documentation from the treating physician is required to establish that.
Transfer options
The right option is a clinical decision, not a commercial one. We recommend the least invasive transport the patient's condition safely allows.
A medically configured aircraft flown for one patient, with the crew and equipment the diagnosis requires. The default for anything unstable or time-critical.
A stretcher installation in the cabin of a commercial flight, with a medical escort. Slower to arrange but appropriate for stable long-haul cases.
A qualified escort accompanying the patient in a normal or business-class seat, carrying oxygen and monitoring as needed.
Where the worst has happened, we handle documentation, authorisations and dignified transport to the final resting country.
Mission log · A repatriation, step by step
Repatriation looks simple from the outside — a flight home. In practice it is a chain of handovers, and every link has to hold.
Early notification matters more than anything else. It lets our medical team start talking to the treating physicians while the clinical picture is still forming.
Our physician and the treating doctor decide together whether the patient can travel safely, and if not, what needs to change first. Sometimes the right answer is to wait 48 hours.
Medical records, discharge authorisation from the treating facility, acceptance from the receiving hospital, and travel documentation for the patient and any accompanying family.
Ground ambulance to the airport, transfer to the aircraft, the flight itself, then the reverse at the other end — under one plan, coordinated by one team.
Clinical handover from the flight crew to the receiving team, with the case notes and imaging from the treating facility travelling with the patient.
Repatriation timelines vary widely. A stable transfer within Europe may be arranged in a day; an intercontinental intensive care transfer with permit requirements can take longer.
Continue reading
How a medically configured aircraft mission is planned and flown.
The continuous-care model that keeps a repatriation from becoming a series of gaps.
When a scheduled flight with a stretcher installation is the better option.
Questions we are asked
If your situation is not covered here, the coordination centre will answer directly, day or night.
Call +44 20 3671 5709The treating physician recommends return home; a EuropeCair physician reviews the case with them and determines fitness to fly; we then arrange the aircraft or airline option, the medical crew, the ground ambulances and the receiving hospital handover, and move the patient bed to bed.
No. Repatriation returns you to your home country or designated home airport for continued treatment. Membership does not cover transport to alternate destinations.
No. The medical event must occur while you are travelling, and medical documentation from the treating physician is required to verify when and where the injury or illness occurred.
Each medically transported patient requires their own aircraft, because each air ambulance is configured with one stretcher at a time. Our coordinators plan the two missions together so the family is separated for as little time as possible.
Ground transport may be arranged when it is medically necessary and available under the applicable service terms. Where a patient's condition allows, transfer between hospital and airport can also be completed by medical transport service or personal transport on the treating physicians' recommendation.
Arrange it before you need it
If a transport is needed now, call the coordination centre. If you are planning ahead, a EuropeCair membership is $600 a year and covers unlimited medically necessary repatriation flights.
