Abstract: The flight dynamiccharacteristics of Airbreathing Hypersonic Flight Vehicles (AHFV)are quite different from the traditional flight vehicles due tothe hypersonic speed regime and the integrated design of waveriderairframe and airbreathing sramjet. The process of designing thevehicle or its control system involves the novel dynamiccharacteristics of AHFVs, so it is crucial to establish a newclass of vehicle-dynamic model that sought to identify criticalissues in flight dynamics of AHFVs. A review is presented with thefocus on the contributions to the development of this new model.First, a brief history of AHFVs from the scramjet research stageto system research stage is outlined. After that, the brand newflight dynamic characteristics of AHFVs are elaborated, includingwide flight ranges, effects of hypersonic speed, constraint ofscramjet, airframe/propulsion interaction, effects ofaeroelasticity. Then followed by a discussion on problems andpossible solutions encountered in modeling the flight dynamics ofAHFVs, which can be divided into the following steps: selection ofcoordinate system, abstraction of the vehicle shape, modeling theelastic airframe, modeling the aerodynamics, modeling the scramjetsystem and derivation of the equations of motion. In the end, Somecomments and future directions on modeling the flight dynamics ofAHFVs are addressed.