In the last decade, the self-accelerating Airy beam is perhaps one of the most widely studied laser modes. Existing research show that Airy beams have propagation-invariant, self-healing and self-accelerating properties, which make them very useful in the fields of particle manipulation, plasma wave, laser-driven acceleration, optical routing, optical imaging, laser-guided sparks, matter-wave, quantum gravity and so on. In this article, an overview on self-accelerating Airy beams, their generation, characteristics and potential applications is provided and the potential perspective of the Airy beams is also presented.