This Organ Donor Week in Spain honors those who have received a second chance thanks to the generosity of donors and the coordinated efforts of professionals and organizations. For over 10 years, the Iberia Group has dedicated its operations to this chain of solidarity, enabling the swift and safe transport of organs for transplant on commercial flights.
Iberia began collaborating with the National Transplant Organization (ONT) in 2013 and has since facilitated the transport of organs for transplantation. The airline selflessly makes 100% of its flights available to the ONT to ensure that organs reach their destinations as quickly as possible to save lives. Since then, the Iberia Group has transported more than 1,000 organs on its aircraft. Most of these are livers and kidneys, which have longer ischemia times—that is, the time they can remain viable from extraction to implantation.
Air transport is especially important for cross-donor transplants, in which two or more donor-recipient pairs are not compatible with each other but are compatible with another pair’s recipient. In this way, a match is made between several donor-recipient pairs to find a compatible organ for each transplant recipient. The process requires precise coordination among medical teams and offers a unique opportunity to maximize organ availability for patients in need. Within this ONT National Program, there are cases where individuals altruistically offer to donate an organ, initiating transplant chains that enable five or six simultaneous transplants.
When the ONT needs to transport an organ by air, Iberia’s operations are made available. The duty manager (the person responsible for overseeing the operation of every flight, passenger, and crew member taking off or landing during those 24 hours) notifies the crew transporting the organ, and the flight receives special monitoring to ensure perfect coordination. Once the organ is received on board, the crew safeguards the cooler until it is handed over at the aircraft door to an ONT representative, who then continues the journey to the hospital for the transplant procedure.
Concepción’s story is like that of thousands of people whose lives have changed thanks to a donor. At age 25, she was diagnosed with polycystic kidney and liver disease, a hereditary condition that causes chronic kidney failure. Her sister offered to donate a kidney, but tests revealed they were not compatible. That’s when they were presented with the option of joining a cross-donor transplant chain. In early 2025, Concepción and her sister underwent surgery along with the rest of the transplant chain participants. Although the transplanted kidney did not come directly from her sister, to Concepción, it feels as if it did. “In this second life my sister has given me, I’ll never have enough days to thank her for such a generous act.”
