The aircraft cable is used in the power system to connect different electrical equipment． Due to the structural limitations of electrical equipment，the volume，weight and performance of aircraft cable are required to be improved． Moreover， when the cable faults occur in aircraft power system，the short － circuit fault or breaking fault of cable will affect the operation of electrical equipment，even the safety of aircraft and pilots． The influences of insulation layer，thermal effect，contact resistance，load and overload short － circuit on the short － circuit characteristics of aircraft cable are analyzed． In addition，the results of transient analysis and Matlab simulation are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical analysis， which provides strong support for fault location and environment optimization of cable．