By Brent Robillard

Aviation, navigation, and the advent of “avigation”

Introduction: Up in the Air

If you’d asked me ten years ago what first pulled me toward Longines, I wouldn’t have said aviation—not even close. For me, it started underwater. The Legend Diver, the Ultra-Chron Diver, even the HydroConquest. Solid, handsome dive watches with real lineage and none of the fuss. Longines, in my mind, was a brand that did honest tool watches exceptionally well—and at a level that felt attainable.

But somewhere around 2017, something shifted.

That was the year Longines released the Aviation BigEye, and while it didn’t immediately send me spiralling into flight history, it planted a seed. It felt different—more intentional. Less like a heritage callback and more like a brand re-examining its own past and deciding it was time to re-engage with it properly.

At the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), the BigEye won the “Revival” Prize, awarded for the best contemporary reinterpretation of an iconic historical model. What followed, over the next several years, felt like a brand remembering who it was—and just as importantly, deciding who it still wanted to be.

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A Big Brand, a Crowded Room

I’ve often thought Longines has one of the trickiest balancing acts in modern Swiss watchmaking. It’s a global brand, consistently ranked among the top ten Swiss watchmakers by sales, with massive reach well beyond enthusiast circles. That alone makes it hard to speak fluently to collectors who care deeply about provenance, movement architecture, and historical accuracy.

Add to that the reality of being part of the Swatch Group—where brand identities were deliberately sized up and repositioned in the 1980s and 90s to avoid overlap—and it becomes even more impressive that Longines has managed to carve out such a coherent voice.

Yet over the last five years or so, something has clearly clicked. The collections have been streamlined. The focus has narrowed toward sports watches, heritage-informed designs, and lines with genuine narrative weight. And crucially, Longines hasn’t just been mining the archives—it’s been building forward. The Spirit Collection is a perfect example: one of the few genuinely new and successful product families from an established Swiss maison that still feels anchored in real history.

That’s where aviation comes in.

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Before GPS, Before Romance, Before Certainty

When we talk about “aviation watches” today, it’s easy to romanticize the category. Leather jackets, goggles, heroic silhouettes. But early aviation was anything but romantic. It was dangerous, imprecise, and often terrifying.

Pilots flew without pressurized cabins. Navigation aids were rudimentary at best. And over open water or hostile terrain, survival often came down to math, discipline, and—crucially—time.

Back then, a wristwatch wasn’t an accessory. It was an instrument.

And few brands were as deeply embedded in that reality as Longines. Not through sponsorships or marketing slogans, but through direct, practical collaboration with the people who needed absolute precision just to make it home.

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Why Time Meant Everything

Before radio navigation and satellites, determining longitude in flight required an accurate time reference paired with celestial observation. Even a tiny timing error could result in miles of drift—often with catastrophic consequences.

So accuracy wasn’t a luxury. Legibility wasn’t aesthetic. And adjustability wasn’t optional.

Longines understood this early and positioned itself not as a lifestyle brand, but as a technical partner to aviators and navigators.

The Weems Watch: Function Dictates Form

One of the most important—but often overlooked—chapters in Longines’ aviation story begins with Philip Van Horn Weems, a U.S. naval aviator who developed a celestial navigation method that required synchronizing a watch with radio time signals.

Traditional watches weren’t up to the task.

The solution was the Weems Second-Setting Watch, introduced in the late 1920s. Its rotating inner seconds disc allowed pilots to sync their watch precisely without stopping the movement—a small innovation that solved a very real problem.

And in doing so, it established a design language we now take for granted: oversized crowns usable with gloves, high-contrast dials, and watches designed to be corrected and synchronized, not admired.

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Lindbergh and Longitude on the Wrist

Then came the name everyone knows: Charles Lindbergh.

Following his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Lindbergh worked directly with Longines to create a watch that simplified longitude calculations in the cockpit. The result was the Hour Angle Watch, patented in 1931.

This wasn’t a commemorative trinket. It was a working tool. Used alongside a sextant and nautical almanac, it allowed pilots to calculate longitude faster and more reliably than ever before.

That distinction matters. Longines didn’t just celebrate aviation—it actively shaped how flight was conducted.

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War, Instruments, and Unseen Work

As aviation matured through the 1930s and into the Second World War, Longines became a supplier of chronographs, navigation timers, and cockpit instruments for air forces and aircraft manufacturers across Europe and North America.

Many of these pieces were never sold to civilians. But their DNA—clarity over decoration, robustness over refinement—still echoes through modern pilot watches today. One clear example of the brand’s presence during that pivotal moment in history has to be the recent reissue of the Pilot Majetek and the Pilot Majtek Pioneer Edition—references to watches actually created for the Czech air force in in the 30s and 40s.

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The Day It All Clicked

For me, all of this history crystallized during a personalized visit to Longines’ home in Saint-Imier, guided by Daniel Hug, Head of Brand Heritage.

I’ve visited museums before. This was different.

Longines’ archives are staggering—not just in scale, but in completeness. Drawings, movements, cases, instruments, spare parts. It’s one of the most impressive horological archives on the planet.

But what struck me most was Hug himself. His enthusiasm isn’t corporate—it’s contagious. He speaks about these watches the way enthusiasts do: with curiosity, reverence, and genuine excitement. He knowingly kept my driver waiting (a long time) so he could tell “just one more thing”—several times. That tour sent me headfirst down the rabbit hole of Longines “avigation,” and I haven’t really surfaced since.

“Avigation” Watches Today

Today, aviation shows up most clearly in collections like the Spirit Pilot and Spirit Zulu Time. They aren’t literal reproductions, and that’s a good thing. Instead, they carry forward the core principles that mattered back then: legibility, proportion, balance, and trust.

COSC certification, sapphire crystals, modern materials—yes. But visually restrained, purposeful, and grounded in function.

In a world where “pilot watch” has become an aesthetic category more than a functional one, Longines stands apart through continuity. These aren’t retro fantasies. They’re evolutions of real tools that once helped people find their way across an unforgiving sky.

And as an enthusiast—one who came for the dive watches and stayed for the history—it’s hard not to admire a brand that can look so confidently backward and forward at the same time.

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Why Longines?

If you’re an enthusiast trying to make sense of a crowded watch landscape, Longines occupies a rare and increasingly valuable middle ground.

This is a brand with real historical credibility—especially in aviation and navigation—but one that hasn’t locked itself into endless reissues or nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Longines’ pilot and aviation watches aren’t just inspired by history; they’re continuations of it.

Just as importantly, Longines understands restraint. Modern collections like the Spirit Pilot and Zulu Time respect their origins without turning into costume pieces. You get COSC-certified movements, solid finishing, contemporary materials, and everyday wearability—without paying a premium simply for heritage storytelling.

Longines offers something increasingly uncommon: credibility without complication (well… you know what I mean).

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About the author

Brent Robillard is a writer, educator, craftsman, and watch enthusiast. He is the author of four novels. You can follow him on Instagram.

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