Abstract The relationships of composition–properties of 80 jet fuels concerning chemical compositions and several specification properties including density, flashpoint, freezing point, aniline point and net heat of combustion were studied. The chemical compositions of the jet fuels were determined by GC–MS, and grouped into eight classes of hydrocarbon compounds, including n -paraffins, isoparaffins, monocyclopraffins, dicyclopraffins, alkylbenzens, naphthalenes, tetralins, hydroaromatics. Several quantitative composition–property relationships were developed with three artificial neural network (ANN) approaches, including single-layer feedforward neural network (SLFNN), multiple layer feedforward neural network (MLFNN) and general regressed neural network (GRNN). It was found that SLFNNs are adequate to predict density, freezing point and net heat of combustion, while MLFNNs produce better results as far as the flash point and aniline point prediction are concerned. Comparisons with the multiple linear regression (MLR) correlations reported and the standard ASTM methods showed that ANN approaches of composition–property relationships are significant improvement on MLR correlations, and are comparable to the standard ASTM methods.