Breitling Aviatior 8 watches

The Breitling Aviator 8 is the brand's line of classic pilot's watches. It arrived in 2018 as the Navitimer 8, the first new collection under chief executive Georges Kern, who joined from Richemont in July 2017, and later references of the same watches carry the Aviator 8 name. The 8 refers to Huit Aviation, the department Breitling set up in 1938 to make cockpit clocks and dashboard instruments for aircraft; huit is French for eight, after the eight-day power reserve common in those clocks.

The case is that of the original Navitimer, with bevelled lugs and a notched bezel, and the dial pairs Arabic numerals with a railway minute track and sword-shaped hands.

The range splits by movement more than by look. The 41 mm Automatic uses Breitling Calibre 17, an ETA 2824, and the 41 mm Day & Date the Calibre 45, the same base with a day and date. The 43 mm Chronograph runs on a Valjoux 7750, and both it and the Automatic also come in black-coated steel. The 43 mm B01 Chronograph, in steel or red gold, carries Breitling's own B01, a self-winding column-wheel chronograph with about 70 hours of power reserve. The 43 mm Unitime adds world time to the in-house automatic B35, also with 70 hours. The Super 8 B20 Automatic is the 46 mm outlier, in steel or titanium. The green Curtiss Warhawk and black Mosquito editions take their names from the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and de Havilland Mosquito aircraft.

The Super AVI B04 Chronograph GMT 46 of 2021 is the bigger, chronometer-certified column-wheel chronograph with a second time zone, 46 mm by 15.9 mm and water resistant to 100 m. It honours four aircraft, the P-51 Mustang, the Corsair, the Mosquito and the Curtiss Warhawk, and takes its cue from the 1953 Ref. 765 AVI, the pilot's watch that became known as the Co-Pilot. The AVI Ref. 765 1953 Re-Edition of 2020 revisits that watch at 41.1 mm, limited to 253 pieces in pink gold and 153 in platinum.