Introduced at Baselworld in 2013, the new Breitling Emergency has finally landed on US shores. Held up by the FCC, it’s been over two years since Breitling introduced the updated Emergency at the annual watch show. Late Thursday evening, Breitling announced it had gained FCC approval and the model would be available in boutiques starting as soon as July. Breitling boutiques are located in New York, Miami, Orlando, and Las Vegas. If you’re not close to one of those stores you might be able to grab one at your local authorized dealer as well.
The Breitling Emergency is the only watch that I know of with a wrist-worn beacon. In other words, if you are in an emergency, such as a plane crash or stranded in the ocean you can alert the authorities right from your wrist. The older version of the Emergency broadcast a signal on the 121.5 MHz analog frequency, but the new model will also broadcast on the 406 MHz frequency. This is the one Cospas-Sarsat started using in 2009. (Cospas-Sarsat is an international system that provides location data to search-and-rescue teams worldwide so they can find and assist people in distress.)
I bet your watch can’t claim to have saved 20 lives, but the old Emergency can. At an event at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space museum Breitling USA president Thierry Prissert noted that it saved more than 20 lives including a man hunting in the Alaskan outback in 2008.
Unfortunately for Breitling and customers expecting the watch, it was held up in the US until it got FCC approval. Over two years was more than the brand was expecting to take. “Because a watch is so much smaller than a traditional locator beacon, it took longer than anticipated to get approval from the FCC, but Breitling was able to satisfy the commission that the Emergency can properly send alerts, and the watch performed perfectly during their exhaustive testing,” Prissert explained on Thursday.
The new Emergency watch is absolutely huge. The standard gents watch, adjusted for the times, should be between 40-44mm. Ten or 20 years ago, the standard was about 36. But the Emergency blows both of these out of the water at 52mm! It’s massive. It also has an electronic chronograph with 12/24 analog and digital display, 1/100th of a second chronograph, alarm, timer, second time zone, multi lingual calendar, and battery end-of-life indication.
As with older Emergency models, the antennas are located on the bottom part of the watch. In order to activate the emergency transmission you have to unscrew the antenna to the correct length. A cap on the other side will release and hopefully you will be located and saved.
A new feature for the 52mm Emergency is a rechargeable battery that is supposedly 1000 times more powerful than the cells usually in a watch.
Now that you want the piece so bad, here are the different models and pricing. It retails for $15,825 with the titanium case on a pro-diver strap. It’s $16,475 if you opt for the full titanium bracelet and $18,745 on a Breitling co-pilot’s bracelet. Oh, there is also a Emergency Night Mission on a black Diver Pro strap that costs $18,910.
