High-precision positioning and navigation in GPS(global positioning system) denied environments is a key technology for aircraft achieving autonomous scout, cruise, and strike. Vision navigation has the advantages of passive-type, low cost, and avoidable accumulated errors avoidable, etc. The fusion of vision and inertial navigation can give full play to their advantages and achieve the purpose of high-precision positioning. Firstly, the development of aircraft positioning technology based on multi-modal image matching assisted inertial navigation was summarized. Then this technology was elaborated in five aspects:the vision-internal calibration, multi-modal image matching, attitude algorithm, data fusion, and back-end optimization. Finally, four possible future directions were proposed as follows, two types of passive positioning combined navigation systems based on deep learning, multi-modal image matching and inertial navigation. The four possible future directions provide a reference for realizing multi-modal image matching assisted inertial navigation aircraft positioning technology.