A preliminary study of the vertical and north-south horizontal ion motions in plasma bubbles in the near-equatorial ionosphere utilizing drift meter data from Atmosphere Explorer E is presented. High-resolution data show that the vertical ion velocity in some bubbles increases approximately linearly with (N0--N)/N, where N0 is the background ion concentration and N is the bubble ion concentration. At sufficiently large No/N the vertical ion velocity saturates, but often at a value substantially larger than the ratio of the gravitational acceleration to the ion neutral collision frequency (g/&ngr;in), which is the nominal collision-dominated velocity limit for cylindrical bubbles. These larger than nominal velocities may result from background eastward electric fields and/or from a vertically elongated bubble cross section. The unanticipated observation that large poleward horizontal drifts accompany these vertical drifts seems to follow naturally from a redistribution of plasma along flux tubes as the plasma convects from the bottomside of the F region to high altitudes.