Flight deck positions at FlyDubai Master Thread - Merged
Is the swallow fat? This could seriously affect its profile drag and reduce its terminal velocity. Is it starved, this could feign area rule thus increasing its wetted area and increase its terminal velocity.
Obviously grooming is a major factor, a well groomed, thin Swallow with a large wetted area would certainly be faster than a scruffy tub of a Swallow.
We are of course making an assumption here, that they are both transiting the planet Earths atmosphere. Assumptions are dangerous, what if our fat and thin scruffy and dapper Swallows are not of this Earth? Could it be that this question is posed of two alien Swallows jumping into the vacuum of space and affected only by Newtonian physics! In that case drag would not be a factor at all!
The possible answers to this question are endless, but maybe I am looking a little bit to deep.