The relationship between airspeed and ground speed is fairly simple. Ground speed is simply the sum of airspeed and wind speed. ... On the other hand, if the wind is blowing against the direction the aircraft is traveling in, the aircraft experiences headwind, and its ground speed is lower than its airspeed.

Is true airspeed and ground speed the same?

The movement of your airplane relative to the ground is called groundspeed. It's true airspeed corrected for wind. With a true airspeed of 100 knots and a tailwind of 20 knots, you'd be flying a groundspeed of 120 knots.

Why does ground speed increase with altitude?

Groundspeed is a vector sum of True Airspeed (TAS) and wind velocity. If an aircraft maintains IAS, TAS (and therefore groundspeed) increases when an aircraft climbs. This is because air density decreases with altitude and consequently, higher speed is required to obtain the same dynamic pressure.