This paper examines and analytically reviews the thermal management systems proposed over the past six decades for gas turbine civil aero engines. The objective is to establish the evident system shortcomings and to identify the remaining research questions that need to be addressed to enable this important technology to be adopted by next generation of aero engines with complicated designs. Future gas turbine aero engines will be more efficient, compact and will have more electric parts. As a result, more heat will be generated by the different electrical components and avionics. Consequently, alternative methods should be used to dissipate this extra heat as the current thermal management systems are already working on their limits. For this purpose, different structures and ideas in this field are stated in terms of considering engines architecture, the improved engine efficiency, the reduced emission level and the improved fuel economy. This is followed by a historical coverage of the proposed concepts dating back to 1958. Possible thermal management systems development concepts are then classified into four distinct classes: classic, centralized, revolutionary and cost-effective; and critically reviewed from challenges and implementation considerations points of view. Based on this analysis, the potential solutions for dealing with future challenges are proposed including combination of centralized and revolutionary developments and combination of classic and cost-effective developments. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is also discussed with a complexity-impact correlation analysis.