This article investigates a novel nonaffine control strategy using neural networks for an air-breathing hypersonic vehicle. Actual actuators are regarded as additional state variables and virtual control inputs are derived from low-computational cost neural approximations, while a new altitude control design independent of affine models is addressed for airbreathing hypersonic vehicles. To further reduce the computational load, an advanced regulation algorithm is applied to devise adaptive laws for neural estimations. Moreover, a new prescribed performance mechanism is exploited, which imposes preselected bounds on the transient and steady-state tracking error performance via developing new performance functions, capable of guaranteeing altitude and velocity tracking errors with small overshoots. Unlike some existing neural control methodologies, the proposed prescribed performance-based nonaffine control approach can ensure tracking errors with preselected transient and steady-state performance. Meanwhile, the complex design procedure of backstepping is also avoided. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the design.