Airport Economic Zone (AEZ) is a suburban area whose infrastructure, land-use, and economy are centered on an airport. More than 100 AEZs are under planning and development in China. Industry choice is the critical issue for all the AEZs. To ensure that all the industries located in AEZs are closely related to airports and air transport, first, we create a pool of optional industries for AEZs based on the industrial input-output model. Second, we construct a multi-objective combinatorial optimization model subject to the constraints of land area of an AEZ, targeting the maximum number of employees, the largest GDP, the highest degree of aviation correlation, the fullest utilization of basic resources, and the greatest policy support. Third, to verify the feasibility of this model in practice, we choose the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Comprehensive Experimental Zone for case study. We divide these five objectives into two categories: economic objectives and non-economic objectives, and put different weights on them to describe different political preferences, and then discuss the calculation results in three scenarios. Finally, we come to the conclusion that comprehensive consideration of every characteristic of each industry can reasonably determine the scale of industrial land use and increase industrial economic benefit in AEZs. Our research provides a new quantitative and reliable method for industry choice and land use planning of an AEZ. •Propose a quantitative standard to screen the aviation-related industries suitable for an Airport Economic Zone.•Transform the industry choice model into a multi-objective unbounded knapsack problem.•Case study on Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone has verified the feasibility of this industry choice model in practice.•This method can reasonably determine the scale of industrial land use and increase industrial economic benefit in AEZs.