Stuck in the past of nautical miles and knots for distance and speed. And feet for height. Not that nautical miles don't make sense for navigation on maps.
If you want to measure distance travelled over the earth you want nms since the earth is a sphere and you don’t want your route length to be longer when you’re at higher altitudes
If you’re measuring distance in nms you want knots as they’re nms/hour
We use kms for other things though- like weather minima, runway length - things on (or close to) the surface. Eg I need either 5km or 8km forward visibility to enter some controlled airspace.
Ft for height is less functionally defined though- that’s just the way it is because it’s the way it’s always been. Not much gain in changing it though
Uh huh... feet is more useful for aviation than meters. 1,000ft is a comfortable vertical separation between planes and it's a nice round number instead of ~300m.
As for nautical miles and knots, one nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude making for easier navigation when you're traveling over significant distances of the planet.
I'd hardly call it stuck in the past but rather the right units for the application at hand.
1. No one is mixing metric and imperial here. All planes use knots, nautical miles, and feet. No one is measuring altitude in meters in one location and then feet in another.
2. I guess we should just use metric for every application even when it doesn't make sense to do so then.
