Aircraft structures are subjected to adverse operational conditions during their service life leading to deterioration and damage. Corrosion specifically remains one of the nagging challenges of aircraft industry. Non-destructive inspection (NDI) procedures for corrosion require aircraft downtime, further resulting in revenue losses. Thus, the ability to reliably monitor and diagnose corrosion with minimum downtime would be of considerable benefit. Pitting corrosion in aircraft structures is often treated and analyzed as the canonical crack, a feature whose growth and consequent effect on structural integrity determines the maintenance intervals in a damage tolerance framework. Crack growth from pits in a corroded structure is sensitive to external loads and generates acoustic emission (AE) in the process. Thus, AE signals can potentially be used to obtain the location and severity of corrosion. However, conventional AE sensors while suitable for ground tests are not amenable to real-time monitoring in a structural health monitoring scenario. In this context, a system comprising fibre optic sensors for AE measurements combined with advanced signal processing tools present a compelling option for damage detection in general and pit/crack growth in particular. Crack growth studies are conducted using notched aluminum specimens and acoustic emission signals monitored using fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. The FBG sensor signals are measured with FAESense™ M-400 system of Redondo Optics Inc. The efficacy of this approach is assessed and compared with the conventional method.