You maximize surface area if you want to minimize sink rate. Glide ratio is a different beast, where you want long and thin wings. Glide ratio is fairly indepen

You maximize surface area if you want to minimize sink rate. Glide ratio is a different beast, where you want long and thin wings. Glide ratio is fairly independent of speed up to Mach 0.5 or so, so you’d want to maximize wing loading to go fast.