Impact fatigue problems of materials widely exist in aviation engineering. Launching and landing of carrier-based aircrafts are typical impact fatigue problems. This paper reviews the early development of the concept of impact fatigue, summarizes the main research progress in the field of impact fatigue since 2000, including the main factors affecting the impact fatigue performance of materials, test methods, damage characterization and life prediction of impact fatigue and numerical calculation methods of impact fatigue problems. The results show that the microstructure, boundary condition, service environment and impact load type of the material have significant influence on the impact fatigue performance. This paper summarizes the main challenges of the impact fatigue problems in the aviation engineering, and prospects the future development of the impact fatigue technology in the aviation field based on the requirements of the future engineering structure design.