Watches and Wonders Edit: Zenith’s leading aviation timepieces – the Swiss luxury watchmaker has led the field for more than 100 years and announces redesigned models in its key Pilot and Defy ranges

Apr 11 , 2023

Zenith’s Pilot Big Date Flyback. Photos: Zenith

Founder Georges Favre-Jacot trademarked the Pilote watch in 1888 and made timepieces for pioneers like Louis Blériot, the first to cross the English Channel, in 1909

The Pilot Automatic and Pilot Big Date Flyback employ the El Primero 3620 and 3652 movements, respectively; there’s also refreshed Defy Skyline, Defy Skyline Skeleton and Defy Revival Shadow models

As a pilot’s watch with a history that stretches back as far as the history of powered aviation itself, Zenith’s Pilot is one of the oldest collections from one of the world’s oldest continuously operating watchmakers.

Zenith’s founder Georges Favre-Jacot was a visionary, trademarking the name of the watch in French as far back as 1888, and then doing so in English in 1904, convinced that mankind’s future lay in the skies. The Swiss luxury watchmaker quickly became one of the world’s leading makers of watches designed for daring aerial explorers, including the legendary Louis Blériot, the first person to cross the English Channel by plane, a feat he achieved in 1909.

Over more than a century of history, the Pilot collection has been known for unmatched durability, legibility and intuitiveness. Now Zenith has redesigned this classic collection for 2023, clothing the historic collection in a distinctly modern aesthetic.

Pride of place in the new collection goes to the Pilot Automatic, which comes with a new case design featuring a flat-top round bezel. The 40mm case comes in a choice of vertically satin-brushed stainless steel or micro-blasted matt black ceramic. It displays classic Pilot features including an oversized crown and horizontal grooves on its black opaline dial that look like the overlapping corrugated metal sheets used in the past to make the aircraft fuselages.

The dial features oversized Arabic numerals for ease of legibility, the metal numbers filled with white Super-LumiNova, except for at six o’clock where instead there is a horizontal line, echoing the artificial horizon instrument on a plane’s control panel. The Pilot Automatic is powered by the El Primero 3620 high-frequency manufacture movement, which offers a power reserve of 60 hours.

The Zenith Big Date Flyback El Primero movement.

There’s an even cleverer brain at the heart of another key piece in the new Pilot collection: the Pilot Big Date Flyback. The new chronograph comes with a pair of additional functions courtesy of the new El Primero 3652 automatic high-frequency chronograph calibre. The oversized date display features a mechanism that advances and stabilises its wheels in less than 0.03 seconds, while the flyback function allows the chronograph to be reset and restarted with the push of a button. The calibre, which again visually mimics the horizon instrument – this time with its rotor – which can be viewed through the back of the watch.

The Pilot Big Date Flyback comes in two versions: a stainless steel one with a minutes totaliser in alternating colours, and central chronograph seconds and minutes hands in bright orange; and a black ceramic rendition with luminescent white markers and hands.