Adhesive bonding is an interesting structural assembling technique for weight saving in modern commercial aircraft, in which the use of composites materials is increasing. In order to meet both optimization and respect of safety conception constraints, the development of accurate numerical strategies is required. Thus, improvement in the experimental characterization and in the design of reliable numerical tools for bonded assemblies is necessary. This paper presents the characterization of the elastic-plastic behaviour of four aeronautical adhesive films, consisting of two epoxy-based resins supported by two types of carrier. The characterization over a wide range of monotonic proportional tensile-shear loads is performed using a modified Arcan test device designed to strongly limit the influence of edge effects. Moreover, to obtain an accurate definition of the initial elastic limit of the adhesives, further experimental tests have been performed using a pressure vessel especially designed to study the ...