We consider the Navier–Stokes equations in a half-plane with a drift term parallel to the boundary and a small source term of compact support. We provide detailed information on the behavior of the velocity and the vorticity at infinity in terms of an asymptotic expansion at large distances from the boundary. The expansion is universal in the sense that it only depends on the source term through some constants. The expansion also applies to the problem of an exterior flow past a small body moving at constant velocity parallel to the boundary, and can be used as an artificial boundary condition on the edges of truncated domains for numerical simulations.