  This paper participates in the development of a unified approach to the
control of aerial vehicles with extended flight envelopes. More precisely,
modeling for control purposes of a class of thrust-propelled aerial vehicles
subjected to lift and drag aerodynamic forces is addressed assuming a
rotational symmetry of the vehicle's shape about the thrust force axis. A
condition upon aerodynamic characteristics that allows one to recast the
control problem into the simpler case of a spherical vehicle is pointed out.
Beside showing how to adapt nonlinear controllers developed for this latter
case, the paper extends a previous work by the authors in two directions.
First, the 3D case is addressed whereas only motions in a single vertical plane
was considered. Secondly, the family of models of aerodynamic forces for which
the aforementioned transformation holds is enlarged.
