general information 

The perfect watch for explorers, this high-tech timepiece works as a watch and a personal survival instrument. It is designed primarily for pilots and aircrews given its built-in emergency micro transmitter so that in case of emergency, just unscrew the lower crown and alert emergency services of your location and rescue requirement. The watch features a round 43mm case fitted with a bi-directional compass bezel in satin-brushed finish.  with applied quarterly Arabic numeral indices and two digital displays for different timekeeping functions such as alarm, calendar, timer, second timezone, and 1/100th second chronograph. The watch is equipped with Breitling caliber B50 Quartz movement. Finishing the sturdy design of this wristwatch is a titanium bracelet with a deployant buckle.There are few watches that live up to their marketing hype, and even fewer that can claim to have genuinely saved lives. Breitling has long been considered the pilot’s watch of choice, but it was the Breitling Emergency that solidified the company’s commitment to aviators and adventurers around the world with one truly unique complication — the personal locator beacon. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, we explore one of the most unique watches ever made.

The story began with Ernest Schneider, the man who acquired Breitling in 1979 when it was on the verge of collapse, and kept it afloat during the quartz crisis, thanks to a new generation of iconic Breitling models. An officer with the Swiss Army signal corps during World War II as well as a passionate pilot and engineer, he was involved in discussions at a NATO conference in the mid-1980s about emergency beacons and the high incidence of false activations which cost the relevant authorities significant time and money. It was at these talks that the idea of a watch with a personal locator beacon was born. Following the meeting, Breitling began working with Dassault Electronique to create reliable beacon technology that could be built into a wristwatch and after a decade of development, the Breitling Emergency was announced.

Released in 1995, the Emergency featured a beacon which, when activated, transmitted a signal on the international distress frequency of 121.5MHz (for owners in the military, the microtransmitter was changed to operate on the military distress band). This transmission could be received up-to 167km away and was directional, allowing authorities to locate the beacon with great accuracy. Initially the Emergency was only available to licenced pilots, but eventually the titanium watch was offered to the general public once a document was signed acknowledging their responsibilities in paying for rescue attempts in the event of a false alarm. Some military units even gifted the watches to their pilots as an unofficial insurance policy, with unconfirmed reports that the Emergency complemented official beacon systems and contributed to successful rescue missions. Meanwhile, if the transmitter was utilised during a true emergency situation, Breitling offered to replace the watch at no charge to the owner.

Between 1995 and 2010, when the first Emergency model was eventually discontinued, 40,000 units were sold, reportedly helping save dozens of lives – and according to Breitling, not a single false alarm was ever reported as having come from an Emergency watch. However, false alarms in general were on the rise, and in 2009 the old 121.5MHz frequency began being phased-out as the primary distress frequency for international search and rescue, which meant it was time for Breitling to begin work on a new model.

The plan was to come back, bigger and better than ever, and four years later the Emergency II was released. Along with the original 121.5MHz homing signal, the watch – which was now technically classified as a personal locator beacon (PLB) by authorities – now also transmitted on the digitally-encoded 406MHz frequency. The new frequency is monitored by the international search and rescue program known as Cospas-Sarsat, with the 406MHz band able to be received by low-level satellites and ground antennae. The digital encoding allows for fewer false alarms as well as a far greater range, but tends to lack the accuracy of the original 121.5MHz. The 406MHz transmitter also requires a much bigger battery to be powered effective

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