Recent advances in the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for turbulent combustion with the relevance for gas turbine jet engines are discussed. Large eddy simulation (LES) has emerged as a powerful approach to handle the highly turbulent, unsteady and thermochemically non-linear flows in the practical combustors, and it is a matter of time for the industry to replace the conventional Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach by LES as the main CFD tool for combustor research and development. Since combustion is a subgrid scale phenomenon in LES, appropriate modelling is required to describe the SGS combustion effects on the resolved scales. Among the various available models, the flamelet approach is seen to be a promising candidate for practical application because of its computational efficiency, robustness and accuracy. A revised flamelet formulation, FlaRe, is introduced to outline the general LES methodology for combustion modelling and then used for a range of test cases to demonstrate its capabilities for both laboratory burners and practical engine combustors. The LES results generally compare well with the experimental measurements showing that the important physical processes are captured in the simulations.