Abstract: To overcome the ill-posed problem of downward continuation for airborne gravity data, the paper proposes an alternative multi-parameter regularization method. The algorithm for selecting the regularization is proposed based on the minimization of mean squares error (MSE).In addition, the comparative analysis of the L-curve and generalized eross-validation(GCV) method of selecting the Tikhonov regularization parameter is conducted. Under of MSE, the condition that the multi-parameter regularization method is superior to the least-squares is given. By making using of the EGM2008 earth gravity model, the simulation experiment is performed. The numerical results show that the multi-parameter regularization method can guarantee the reliability and stability of downward continuation. And the multi-parameter regularization method shows the better performance than the general Tikhonov regularization method so that the feasibility of multiparameter regularization method in downward continuation for airborne gravity data is demonstrated.