Grab aerial

Samus using her grab air offensively.

Samus using her grab air as a Tether Recovery.

A grab aerial (also known as a grab air or zair) is an aerial attack that utilizes a character's extended grab implement in the air. Link, Samus, Young Link, Lucas, and Toon Link are the only characters with this ability, though Lucas's grab air doesn't do any damage. Grab airs are performed simply by pressing the grab button while in the air. Grab airs can work as a tether recovery, or a wall-grapple in Melee. Pressing the attack button during an air dodge will cancel it into a grab aerial, allowing for aerial punishing.

Grab airs inflict little damage and have very little KO potential. However, they have long range, and can be used to surprise an opponent. A short hop followed by a grab air can be useful for spacing. They are also considerably more useful in Brawl and SSB4 than in Melee, due to no lag upon landing, contrary to both game's lack of L-cancel. This technique is often used to avoid the landing lag glitch. In all three games, characters with it can cancel an air dodge with zair, which in Brawl and SSB4, allows one to zair or tether recovery without dropping a held item. Another difference between Melee and the other two games is that zairs do not cause a character to go into a helpless state in Brawl and SSB4, allowing for repeated usage more easily, as well as being able to safely use the move off of the stage.

In Brawl, if a character uses his/her grab air right before getting star KO'd, the KO blast will be seen with the usual colourful explosion seen on other blast lines, and it will be facing upwards off the screen.

List of grab airs

Link's tether recovery narrowly missing the ledge in Brawl.

• Link's Hookshot and Clawshot - In Melee, it has high lag and low damage, but in Brawl it can be used to start combos and the ending hit has much more knockback. Combos into a DACUS at moderate percentages.
• Lucas - Thrusts his Rope Snake forward. No damage, but can be used to move Lucas a bit faster in the air.
• Samus - Grapple Beam. Considered to be Samus' best spacing move in Brawl. In Melee, it can be canceled by dropping bombs in the NTSC version.
• Toon Link - Shoots his Hookshot forwards. Short range compared to Link and Samus' zairs, although due to its short height, it's more easy to hit grounded opponents. 4%. Very useful for setting up an up smash.
• Young Link - Shoots his Hookshot forwards. Useful spacing tool. An interesting fact about this is that it has the same model as Link's (like his grab), making it look a little bit large when used by him.
• Zero Suit Samus - Shoots her guns attached laser forward. As a grapple, it behaves almost identically to her Plasma Whip.