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Pocket milling is an essential issue in rough milling. Although machining capacities have been strongly modified, no significant evolution was observed about pocket milling trajectories. Trochoïds and plunge milling are new types of strategies which have found practical applications in hard materials rough milling. This paper aims at evaluating their potential in rough pocket milling of aluminium alloys. Algorithms were developed to generate trochoïdal and plunge cutting trajectories for pocket milling, with cycle time optimisation regarding to milled surfaces quality. An experimental campaign has also been done and focused both on productivity and quality issues. Two different high speed milling machine tools were tested: a serial three-axis machine tool and a parallel kinematics five-axis machine tool. The results of this work leads to a better definition of the strengths and weaknesses of trochoïdal milling and plunge cutting strategies in aluminium alloys rough machining with the focus to optimize the choice of strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]