Several types of planes can hover, but they all need a way to direct thrust straight down to counteract their own weight. Helicopters hover by design, so most people asking this question want to know about fixed-wing aircraft and hybrids that can do it. The list includes military jets like the Harrier and F-35B, tiltrotor aircraft like the V-22 Osprey, and a growing number of electric air taxis currently in development.
Each of these aircraft uses a different engineering approach to solve the same problem: generating enough downward force to hold a plane stationary in the air without a runway.
The Harrier Jump Jet
The Harrier is the aircraft most people picture when they think of a hovering plane. Introduced in the late 1960s by the British, it was the first operational fixed-wing jet designed to take off and land vertically. The key to its hover capability is four rotating nozzles mounted on the sides of a single jet engine. A system powered by high-pressure air from the engine rotates all four nozzles simultaneously, directing the exhaust stream downward. That fast-moving air creates an equal and opposite reaction force pushing the aircraft up, counteracting its weight and allowing it to climb vertically or hold a stationary hover.
When the pilot is ready to fly forward, the nozzles rotate rearward, gradually transitioning thrust from vertical lift to horizontal speed. This approach, called vectored thrust, is mechanically elegant because it uses one engine for both hovering and forward flight. The tradeoff is that hovering burns fuel at an enormous rate, so Harriers typically use short takeoffs with a partial hover assist rather than going fully vertical when carrying heavy loads.
The F-35B Lightning II
The F-35B is the modern successor to the Harrier concept, but it uses a more complex system. Instead of relying on a single engine with rotating nozzles, the F-35B combines two sources of vertical thrust. At the rear, the main engine exhaust exits through a nozzle that can swivel downward. At the front, a large lift fan mounted behind the cockpit is driven by a shaft connected to the engine. This fan pulls air from above the aircraft and blasts it downward, balancing the thrust so the plane doesn’t tip nose-up during hover.
Small roll nozzles under the wings provide additional stability. The result is a stealth fighter that can operate from short runways or amphibious assault ships, hover to land vertically, and still fly at supersonic speeds in forward flight. It is currently the only stealth aircraft in the world with hover capability.
The V-22 Osprey
The V-22 Osprey takes a completely different approach. Instead of redirecting jet exhaust, it physically tilts two massive rotor assemblies (called proprotors) mounted on each wingtip. The engine nacelles rotate from horizontal, at 0 degrees, all the way to 96.3 degrees, which is slightly past vertical and angled a few degrees behind the aircraft. In the fully upright position, the proprotors work like helicopter rotors, generating vertical lift for hover and low-speed flight.
As the Osprey accelerates, the nacelles gradually tilt forward. During this conversion, which happens between about 74 and 1 degrees of nacelle angle, the aircraft shifts from rotor-based control to conventional wing-based flight. The flight computers progressively hand off control from the rotor swashplates to standard control surfaces like flaperons, elevators, and rudders as airspeed builds and those surfaces become effective in the faster airflow. At 0 degrees with the nacelles fully horizontal, the Osprey flies like a turboprop airplane, reaching speeds no helicopter can match.
Historical Aircraft That Hovered
The quest to make planes hover goes back to the 1950s. One of the more dramatic experiments was the Ryan X-13 Vertijet, a “tail-sitter” jet that rested vertically on a reinforced tail section and launched straight up. On November 24, 1953, test pilot Peter Girard made the first manned hovering flight in a jet aircraft using this unusual machine. A vectorable exhaust nozzle linked to the flight controls provided stability during hover, while small bleed-air thrusters on the wingtips handled fine adjustments to pitch and yaw during the tricky process of landing back on its tail.
The Soviet Union took its own approach with the Yak-38 Forger, a carrier-based jet that entered service in 1976. Rather than using one engine with rotating nozzles like the Harrier, the Yak-38 had two dedicated lift engines mounted in-line behind the cockpit, each producing about 6,700 pounds of thrust. These engines pointed straight down and existed solely for vertical flight, adding significant weight and complexity. The main cruise engine also had a vectoring nozzle for additional vertical thrust.
Both designs were ultimately abandoned. The X-13 and similar tail-sitters proved impractical because pilots had to look over their shoulders to land, and the performance compromises didn’t justify replacing conventional aircraft. The Yak-38 was notoriously limited in range and payload, partly because those extra lift engines were dead weight during normal flight.
Electric Air Taxis and Tilt-Wing Designs
A new generation of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is being developed for urban transportation, and many of them can hover. These designs generally fall into two categories: multirotors and tilt-wing configurations.
Multirotor eVTOLs work like scaled-up drones, using multiple electric motors with fixed propellers to generate vertical lift. They hover naturally but sacrifice efficiency in forward cruise because those rotors create drag. Tilt-wing designs, including concepts being studied by NASA, try to get the best of both worlds. In hover, the entire wing tilts upward so the propellers point skyward, generating lift like a multirotor. In cruise, the wing rotates to horizontal, and the aircraft flies on its wings like a conventional plane. Companies like Joby Aviation and Archer are developing commercial versions of these concepts, aiming to carry passengers on short urban routes within the next few years.
The aerodynamics of hover are particularly challenging for these smaller aircraft. In the hover regime, interactions between multiple rotors and between the rotors and the airframe itself affect power demands and stability in ways that engineers are still working to optimize.
Why Hovering Is So Hard on Aircraft
Hovering is the least efficient thing a plane can do. In forward flight, wings generate lift essentially for free by moving through air. In a hover, every ounce of lift comes from raw engine power pushing air downward. This means hovering burns fuel or battery charge far faster than any other phase of flight.
There are physical consequences, too. The exhaust from a hovering jet is hot enough to damage the surfaces below it. Studies of VTOL jets hovering over naval ship decks have measured temperatures reaching roughly 250°C (about 480°F) at the point directly beneath the exhaust. That heat creates intense thermal stress and deformation in the steel deck plating. Naval vessels that operate VTOL aircraft require specialized heat-resistant coatings and deck materials to handle repeated vertical landings.
This thermal problem is one reason why vertical landings are used sparingly even on aircraft capable of them. Pilots of the F-35B and Harrier often prefer short rolling landings when conditions allow, saving the full hover for situations where no runway is available.