let us take a step back then.
A person is flown to an altitude above the earth that is totally covered by clouds and given an accelerometer and an airspeed indicator and he jumps out of the plane to determine the model. so when he jumps out he notices that the accelerometer shows an acceleration of 9.81m/s/s then it gradually goes to zero while his airspeed increases then remains static, so now he must ask himself either a) he was accelerated down while air resistance counteracted that until he reached a state of equalibrium or b) he remained stationary until the force from air resistance accelerated him up until he reached a state of equalibrium. from there he would need to test to see which one is correct. And as you can see at no time can that person relate what is happening to him with the surface of the earth. the acceleration of the earth is not in this system only the velocity of the air.