Aviation-inspired watches are what Bell & Ross does best. While the BR-05 has garnered outsized attention for the brand, I’ve always been partial to its Instrument series of square watches. For me, these are the core of the brand, drawing direct inspiration from cockpit instrument panels. Within the Instrument collection, Bell & Ross has released a number of Flight Instrument watches. These limited editions each turn ordinary watch dials into facsimiles of a specific flight instrument. There have been 14 prior Flight Instrument watches, including dials based on a compass, a HUD, a radar screen, a radio compass, and a gyrocompass (yes, that’s three compasses). The releases have followed an annual pattern since 2019, and for 2024 the brand has released the Bell & Ross BR-03 Horizon, modeled on an attitude indicator.
The new BR-03 Horizon has the same case as the rest of the BR-03 automatics, which was slimmed down from 42mm to 41mm last year. The case measures 10.6mm thick and is made from solid matte black ceramic for a very tactical look that the brand has long favored. In fact, it’s downright weird to see a BR-03 in steel. There’s a knurled crown, a flat sapphire crystal, and the watch gets a 100m depth rating. The Horizon will come equipped with a black rubber strap, as is the brand’s wont, and if you haven’t worn one of these watches, I can tell you that the flared strap makes all the difference. The flare of the strap is designed to meet the outer edge of the lugs completely mitigating the blocky design, making it quite pleasant on the wrist. In addition to the rubber strap, a bright orange Velcro strap will be included (my experience with those has been less ideal).
The dial, of course, is where this watch gets exciting. Some of the limited Flight Instrument watches don’t do much except change the base dial. Some become completely unreadable, seemingly offended by the notion that a watch should show the time. At a glance, that’s the case here, but further inspection reveals a clever dial and hand configuration. Mirroring the artificial horizon layout seen on attitude indicators, the rotating dial has a sky-blue top half and a black bottom half, both with (non-functional) pitch indicator lines, bisected by a fixed, floating representation of a plane’s wings and fuselage in orange and black. Hours are shown by the black arrow on the rotating dial (mimicking the roll indicator), minutes by the white hand, and seconds by the full-width black and striped hand.
The dial is surrounded by a black and white chapter ring with Super-LumiNova matched on the minute hand. To ensure all-condition legibility, the sky is also lumed, which I think is a nice surprise and shows some great forethought. I do wish the brand had gone and lumed the white stripes on the seconds hand, though. That would’ve been quite fun.
Under the solid caseback, the watch runs the BR-CAL.327, which is based on the Sellita SW300-1. This has become the go-to for Bell & Ross three-handers, with good reason. The watch has a 54-hour power reserve at 28,800 vph and enables a thinner chassis than the SW200. On top of that, you get reliability and almost universal serviceability.
I think this may be one of the better recent examples of the Flight Instrument watches. All of these watches seem to play with the limits of readability, and I suppose that’s no different here. But I think the brand has gotten creative without too much sacrifice, and the blue and orange offer a nice pop that isn’t often seen in Bell & Ross watches. The Bell & Ross BR-03 Horizon is priced at $4,500 USD and is limited to 999 pieces. For more information, please visit the Bell & Ross website.
