In our previous paper (Fujita and Miyahara, 2005), the stability of cellular foam generated from nonionic surfactant aqueous solution was investigated for the purpose of foam breakage in chemical reactors and bioreactors. In the present study, the growth and collapse process of cellular foam formed on a perforated plate in a standard bubble column were observed using four kinds of anionic surfactant aqueous solutions and five kinds of cationic surfactant aqueous solutions. As a result, two types of growth and collapse process were found. Furthermore, the critical film thickness at the time of the burst of the cellular foam was estimated by using the uniform film model of film drainage in the Plateau border to describe the rate of thinning of a film proposed by Hartland and Barber (1974) and Barber and Hartland (1975). The critical film thickness obtained for anionic surfactant aqueous solution is small compared with that for cationic surfactant aqueous solution, leading to noticeable stability for cellular foam of anionic surfactant aqueous solution. Moreover, the critical film thickness for cellular foam of ionic surfactant aqueous solution used in this study was independent of Morton number and correlated in terms of physical properties of surface viscosity number, capillary number and HLB value.