Drop a cube into a new scene. Create an animation sequence of the cube flying around as though it's an aircraft. You can do turns, banking, ascending, descending, or whatever you want your aircraft to do.

Next, bring your aircraft into the same scene. I do this by "importing" my models(I keep copies in directx format for storage on diskettes).

Place your aircraft model over the cube so that the cube is inside your aircraft and doesn't show(you may need ro scale cube down a bit). Make sure the cube is centered inside your model.

Group your aircraft to the cube, save it, and run the animation. Your aircraft will follow the same path as the cube inside it, making all the turns, banking, etc.

Note:
You could do several different animations this way, save them as "Path1", "Path2", or whatever names you want, and you have a kind of library of animated flight paths to work with before ever bringing your model into the scene.
Les