With the rapid development of aviation science and technology, the application of new materials and advanced technology, the modern aircraft structures are becoming more and more complicated. Traditional structural damage monitoring and structural reliability design face the new challenges. The structural health monitoring technology obtains structural response through advanced sensor on-line monitoring. The structural response information will be used to access structural health status and assess the residual life of the structure, and further develop the aircraft structure maintenance decision. This technology can be taken at the appropriate period of time to ensure the safety and service of structures to achieve maximum economic benefits. The state of structural health monitoring technology for aircraft structures is reviewed in this paper, including components of structural health monitoring system, Lamb wave based global damage detection technology, optical fiber based global condition perception, local damage detection method, multi-sensor fusion detection technology and structural health assessment technology. The development trend and challenges of structural health monitoring of aircraft structures are also discussed.