The research and development of environmentally friendly alternatives for chromate-based surface treatments and coating has considerably accelerated over the last decades. In fact, as a result of the recent European legislation restrictions toward chromate use and disposal, several promising candidates have been designed, and used in industry. For example, more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as rare-earth-based or lithium-based coatings or the so-called trivalent chromium-based coating, were implemented in industry and their inhibition mechanisms largely documented. Conversely, ionic liquids (ILs), are considered as an emerging and promising route for the development of chromate replacements and as demonstrated by several studies, due to the quasi-infinite possibility of composition, and cost-effectiveness. For instance, in the context of Mg-alloys or steels protection, it has been suggested that a synergy between the ILs cation and anion occurs, providing inhibition on the cathodic and anodic reaction. However, although promising results have been shown for several alloy systems, to this date, only limited studies explored the potential of ILs as corrosion inhibitors for high strength Al alloys, known to be highly susceptible to localised corrosion. In this work, corrosion inhibition of amino-acid based ionic liquids was investigated for a high strength Al-Cu-Mg alloys AA2024-T6. The inhibition mechanisms of an amino-acid and ammonium based ionic liquid used as corrosion inhibitors were investigated. The anodic and cathodic kinetics were characterised using potentiodynamic polarisation testing in an aggressive environment (0.1M NaCl) in the presence of the ILs at several concentrations, and particular attention was given on the incidence of the ILs on the pitting potential. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) at open circuit potential, and in the anodic and cathodic domain, was performed in order to isolate their associated mechanisms. Microstructural characterisation was conducted before and after immersion testing, using scanning electrochemical microscopy (SEM) in order to identify preferential inhibition sites as well as the elemental composition protective films.