Jürgen Raps

Jürgen Raps was a German pilot and aviation manager. He served as Chief Operating Officer at Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, and is described in obituaries as a member of the Lufthansa Passage executive board as well as the accountable manager and chief pilot.
He was also an honorary professor at Hochschule Bremen in the fields of aviation and management.

Life and career

Raps was born in Bayreuth. At the age of five, he took a sightseeing flight with his father departing from Bayreuth Airport, flying over Upper Franconia. At age 13, he learned gliding with the Luftsportgemeinschaft Bayreuth.
After completing secondary school, he applied to the Deutsche Lufthansa commercial pilot school in Bremen. He began training there in 1970 and obtained his pilot licence in 1972. He subsequently served as a first officer on the Boeing 737 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. In 1984, he became a captain on the Boeing 737.
In 1990, Raps became head of the Lufthansa commercial pilot school in Bremen. In 1996, he was appointed chief pilot and head of flight operations.
He was credited with leading Lufthansa's first scheduled service linking West Germany and East Germany in 1989. In 2007, he was among the first pilots worldwide to obtain a licence for the Airbus A380. In 2010, he flew an A380 transporting the German national football team to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg.
Additional leadership roles and dates are listed in his professional profile.
Raps died on 5 December 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona, at the age of 74.

Activities

Raps served as president of the aviation initiative AIREG.
AIREG advocates the expansion and use of renewable energy and alternative aviation fuels to reduce CO₂ emissions in aviation.

Media

Raps was the protagonist of the PilotsEYE.tv documentary San Francisco A380 – The final flights of JR.
He also appeared as an interviewee in the hr documentary series Mittendrin – Flughafen Frankfurt.
A two-part podcast/video interview was also published in the PilotsEYE environment.