NRW carries out a deportation flight with only one migrant

During a deportation from North Rhine-Westphalia at the end of September, only a single man was flown to Bulgaria in a specially chartered Boeing 737. On board the plane, which had space for 189 passengers, were the Lebanese and only the crew, a handful of police officers and a doctor as companions. This is reported by “Bild”, the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” first reported on the flight.

The plane from the Polish charter company Enter Air took off from Düsseldorf on September 29th at 12:44 p.m. and landed in Sofia after a good two hours. The deported Lebanese had no criminal record.

According to the report, he entered the European Union via Bulgaria and later came to Germany. Due to the Dublin rules, Germany was able to send him back to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian authorities will decide whether he has to return to Lebanon from there.

According to “Bild”, North Rhine-Westphalia chartered aircraft for eleven such intra-European deportations in 2025. There were a maximum of 20 people in one machine, sometimes there were only six, four or two. However, it was the first time that only one person was deported on a charter flight.

The responsible NRW refugee ministry told “Bild” about the question of why the plane only took off with one migrant despite its size: “The space quota will not be completely filled if individual return measures fail.” The ministry cited “health problems of the person obliged to leave, the non-arrival of the person obliged to leave or a voluntary departure of the person to be returned in the meantime” as possible reasons for such failures.

According to the report, it is not yet clear how much the man's deportation actually cost. A final bill is not yet available. For a comparable flight with seven people required to leave the country, the ministry stated the pure charter costs last year at around 63,000 euros. If people from other federal states or on behalf of the federal government are taken, the costs are distributed accordingly.

In addition, the flight at that time incurred 328.03 euros for interpreters, 1,510.86 euros for the medical team, 114.78 euros for packed lunches and 721.46 euros in airport fees.

According to “Bild”, final invoices are available for seven of North Rhine-Westphalia’s eleven charter flights to Sofia or Zagreb in 2025. The total costs of the individual flights were between 49,748 and 98,219 euros.