The paper is devoted to application of sliding mode control technique for stabilization of a planar vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Lateral motion of the autonomous aircraft is considered, containing two planar coordinates of the aircraft center of gravity and one angular coordinate for aircraft attitude. To verify the theoretical statements, simulations in Matlab/Simulink environment have been carried out. The cases of varying degrees of the control channels interference, parametric perturbations, external disturbances as the sums of harmonic signals, and unmodeled dynamics have been studied by a simulation. The case of aircraft control without output signals derivatives measurement was examined. For differentiation, the super-twisting algorithms have been employed. The results obtained show a good system performance.