# Does airspeed come into play with vertical speed, in terms of who will reach the ground first?

So let’s say there’s two aircraft, which are the same, and both are cruising at 28,000FT, the only difference is one plane is doing 260 knots and the other is doing 280 knots. If they both pitched down reaching a vertical speed of -15,000FT/Min at the same exact time, would the aircraft going 280 knots still hit the ground first despite sharing a vertical speed the entire time??

• The question is too vague. As asked, it seems like a straightforward physics problem, and a trivial one at that (since you've declared that the vertical movement is identical for both aircraft), nothing really to do with aviation. On the other hand you haven't defined "ground". If the "ground" is actually a mountain some distance ahead, the horizontal speed will matter more than vertical, because that defines how soon the aircraft will reach that ground. – Peter Duniho Jan 22 at 20:01

• @Ron Beyer Do the math. $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$. Descent angle is closer to 45 degrees. – Robert DiGiovanni Jan 22 at 18:59