Foot Per Minute (ft/min)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.00508 m/s. Used for climb rates in aviation.

1 foot per minute = 0.00508 meters per second (exactly).

About the foot per minute

Pilots in most ICAO member countries read their climb and descent in feet per minute, a convention kept even in otherwise metric countries. The vertical speed indicator in an aircraft such as the Robinson R22 helicopter shows ft/min, and the Wikipedia article on rate of climb quotes a Cessna 172 at maximum weight climbing at 721 ft/min, which is 3.66 m/s.

The arithmetic checks out: 721 multiplied by 0.00508 m/s per ft/min gives 3.663 m/s. The conversion factor is exact, because a foot is 0.3048 m and a minute is 60 s, so 1 ft/min is 0.3048 divided by 60, or 0.00508 m/s. Variometers are sometimes calibrated in knots instead, where 1 kn is about 0.514 m/s.

Sources: Wikipedia: Rate of climb; NIST SP 811 Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Foot Per Minute conversion chart

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