A profiling approach for determining a path for an aircraft, using a method comprising the steps of determining at least two waypoints between a starting position and a desired terminal position for the aircraft, determining a path for the aircraft between the starting position and the terminal position, by performing a linear approximation of the heights of the waypoints such that the average height change between waypoints is minimized, and constrained by a maximum climb angle of said aircraft, and performing a linear approximation of arrival times for each of the waypoints and aircraft speeds between the waypoints, constrained by permissible velocity of said aircraft on the slope between the waypoints. In this way, the non-linear relationship between climb rate and speed is approximated with linear equations, because determination of the path between each set of two waypoints is broken into two linear problems.