Feet to Meters Conversion (Why Pilots Never Switched to Metric)
To convert feet to meters, multiply the foot figure by 0.3048. Ten feet is 10 × 0.3048 = 3.048 m, and a hundred feet is 30.48 m. Going the other way, multiply meters by 3.28084 to get feet. The factor looks arbitrary until you know where it comes from, and that history explains why one entire industry still refuses to give feet up.
The exact factor, and its mirror
One foot equals 0.3048 meters exactly. This isn’t a rounded approximation, it’s the international foot as defined by a 1959 agreement between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the same treaty that fixed the pound at 0.45359237 kg. Because it’s a clean decimal, converting feet to meters always terminates: 10 ft × 0.3048 = 3.048 m, 100 ft × 0.3048 = 30.48 m, no rounding needed at any scale.
The reverse conversion is messier. One meter equals 1 ÷ 0.3048 feet, which works out to 3.2808398950131…, a decimal that never resolves cleanly. This tool and this article use 3.28084, six significant figures, accurate enough for anything from a room measurement to a flight plan.
Worked examples: buildings, mountains and altitude
A single multiplication handles anything, but seeing it applied to real reference points makes the scale easier to grasp:
| Reference | Feet | Meters |
|---|---|---|
| Eiffel Tower (with antennas) | 1,083 ft | 330.2 m |
| Denali (tallest US peak) | 20,310 ft | 6,190.5 m |
| Mount Everest | 29,032 ft | 8,849 m |
| Typical airliner cruising altitude | 35,000 ft | 10,668 m |
| Kármán line (edge of space) | 328,084 ft | 100,000 m |
Notice how the airliner cruising altitude converts to an exact round number, 10,668 m, no rounding involved. That’s a coincidence of the specific figure airlines settled on, not a property of the conversion itself. The Kármán line, the altitude that’s internationally recognized as the boundary of space, was in fact defined as 100 km first and then expressed in feet for aviation charts, which is why it lands almost exactly on 328,084 ft rather than a round number in the imperial column.
Why aviation never switched to meters
Almost every country that uses feet for altitude also uses meters for everything else, roads, height, weather, construction. That’s not an oversight. The International Civil Aviation Organization, the body that governs global air traffic under the 1944 Chicago Convention, standardized “flight levels” in feet specifically so that a pilot’s radio call means the same thing over Paris, Tokyo or São Paulo. A French air traffic controller and a Brazilian pilot both say “flight level three five zero” and both mean 35,000 feet, no translation, no unit confusion, no room for a costly misunderstanding at 500 knots.
The genuinely useful part of this story is the exception. Russia, China, Mongolia and North Korea historically ran their own domestic airspace in meters instead of feet, out of step with the rest of the world’s aviation system. That mismatch forced dual-unit altitude charts and extra cross-checks at their borders, and investigators have pointed to the feet-meters discrepancy as a contributing factor in at least one serious mid-air incident over the decades those systems coexisted. The lesson isn’t that feet are an outdated leftover unit here, it’s the opposite: feet are the deliberate, chosen international safety standard, and the one region that didn’t use them had to build extra safeguards to compensate.
Calculate with your own numbers
Enter any figure below and get the meters equivalent instantly, or flip it to go from meters to feet.
Common mistakes and edge cases
- Rounding the factor too early on large distances. Using 0.3 instead of 0.3048 is fine for a single quick glance, but the error compounds with scale. A 500-foot property boundary: 500 × 0.3 = 150 m, while the correct value is 500 × 0.3048 = 152.4 m, a 2.4 m (about 7.9 ft) shortfall. On a surveyed lot or a fence line, that’s not a rounding quirk, it’s a real gap between where you think the boundary is and where it actually sits.
- A fast mental-math shortcut, for when precision doesn’t matter. Multiply the foot figure by 0.305 instead of the full 0.3048. It’s close enough for comparing furniture, room sizes or hiking trail lengths (about 0.06% off), but never use it for anything you’re going to cut, survey or bill.
- Going meters to feet with the wrong shortcut. The reverse direction, multiply by 3.28084, is the one most people round too aggressively, often to 3.3 without noticing. On a small number the gap is invisible, but on something like a 300-meter tower it compounds into several feet of error, the same trap as mistake one, just running in the opposite direction.
Frequently asked questions
How many meters is 1 foot? 0.3048 meters exactly. This is a fixed international definition, not a rounded estimate, so it holds at any scale you multiply it by.
How many feet is 1 meter? 3.28084 feet. Unlike the feet-to-meters direction, this number is a repeating decimal truncated to six figures, precise enough for everyday and most professional use.
Why does aviation still measure altitude in feet? Because ICAO standardized flight levels in feet after the 1944 Chicago Convention, so a radio call means the same thing to any pilot or controller worldwide regardless of the country’s usual measurement system. Russia, China, Mongolia and North Korea historically ran domestic altitude in meters instead, and that mismatch has required extra cross-checks and has been cited as a contributing factor in at least one serious mid-air incident.
How many meters is 6 feet? 1.8288 meters, the conversion most people look up when translating a height from feet and inches into meters.