With a $1.1 million RM 039, a pilot can calculate fuel burn, flight times and ground speed. The titanium-encased assembly of gears and springs can convert gallons to liters and pounds to kilograms, and even measure altitude.
It also tells the time.
With nearly 1,000 parts, the engineering marvel marks a high point in one of chronography’s most demanding domains: aviator watches. The timepiece, less than a centimeter thick and officially called the Tourbillon RM 039 Aviation E6-B Flyback, handles almost all the calculations done by hand for decades using an aviator’s slide rule.
“It is the perfect instrument for facing the challenges that confront pilots during flights,” says a brochure from producer Richard Mille SA.
Just don’t expect to see a pilot wearing one.
“The market isn’t specifically pilots,” says company spokeswoman Caroline Samson.
Price isn’t the issue. A private jet isn’t cheap, either. The thing is, few aviators need an aviator watch.
“In all my years, I’ve never, ever seen anyone use a watch to do a calculation,” says retired British pilot Nigel Champness, who flew in the Royal Air Force and commercially for 47 years. “The closest I came to a pilot’s watch was a steam-driven RAF one.”
To the mysterious wonders of flight, add this: Just as the need aviators have for watches took a nose dive, the ambition of aviator watches soared.
Ever since jeweler Louis Cartier in 1904 helped his aviator friend Alberto Santos-Dumont by creating one of the first men’s wristwatches of any kind, pilots have worn chronographs. Today, though, stratospherically expensive aviator wristwatches are usually on the arms of armchair pilots and in the dreams of aspiring aviators.
“When I was in high school and learning to fly, all I wanted was a pilot watch—and the sunglasses to go with it,” recalls Toby Bright, a private pilot who went on to a career in aviation and now owns three small planes.
For professional aviators, a watch now is “less for aviation and more for making sure you’re on the right time zone to get dinner when you land,” says watch collector and critic Max Reddick.
Computers now fly jetliners with minimal pilot input. Private aviators rely on simple apps and satellite navigation for more information than any watch can offer.
That doesn’t stop watchmakers from flying in the face of history and seeking a lift from aviation’s air of high-tech machismo. Bell & Ross of France makes square watches that resemble vintage cockpit dials. IWC Schaffhausen, of Switzerland, offers watches with names redolent of aviation lore, including Top Gun, Spitfire and Antoine de Saint Exupery, the French pilot who wrote “The Little Prince.”
British aviation watchmaker Bremont this year joined Boeing Co.