Aiming at the shortcomings that the current aircraft type identification method is easily affected to environmental influences, a novel aircraft type identification method based on fiber optic Bragg grating (FBG) sensing array of smart runway was proposed. The distributed vibration response of the aircraft taxiing was collected by using the FBG array buried horizontally under the pavement. By analyzing the time-history impulse response features of multiple measurement areas, the time differences between the main and auxiliary landing gears passing through the optical cable were determined. The taxiing trajectory of the aircraft was sensed by the FBG array buried longitudinally under the pavement, through which the taxiing speed of the aircraft was determined by polynomial fitting. The aircraft type was identified based on matching relationship between the test value and the theoretical value of the main and auxiliary landing gears of the aircraft. The aircraft information in the test flight and the initial two-month operation of a certain airport were used for method verification. The results show that the identification accuracy of the proposed identification method can reach 98.44%, which can effectively distinguish the B757, B738, A320 and A321 models.