Jürgen Raps

Jürgen Raps (11 August 1951 – 6 December 2025) was a German pilot and aviation manager. He served as Chief Operating Officer (Operations) at Lufthansa Passenger Airlines (Lufthansa Passage), and is described in obituaries as a member of the Lufthansa Passage executive board as well as the accountable manager (AOC) and chief pilot. He was also an honorary professor at Hochschule Bremen in the fields of aviation and management.

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 was credited with leading Lufthansa's first scheduled service linking West Germany and East Germany in 1989.

Raps died on 6 December 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona, at the age of 74.

Activities Raps served as president (industry and aviation) of the aviation initiative AIREG (Aviation Initiative for Renewable Energy in Germany). 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 (episode 12). He also appeared as an interviewee in the hr documentary series Mittendrin – Flughafen Frankfurt (A 380: Letzter Take-off für den Supervogel). A two-part podcast/video interview (planeTALK) was also published in the PilotsEYE environment.