Flew across, he had held (7)
I believe the answer is:
hovered
'flew' is the definition.
(hovering is a kind of flying)
'across he had held' is the wordplay.
'across' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'he had' becomes 'hed'.
'held' becomes 'over' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'hed' placed around 'over' is 'HOVERED'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for hovered that I've seen before include "Hung in the air" , "Remained in the air without moving" , "Remained in the one place in the air" , "Floated" .)