The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I have a Breitling Airborne that after approximately 9 months of owning it, the minute hand stopped moving and yet the second and continued to move.

I was told to send it in for repair and the problem was with the cannon pinion. They said it was a factory defect and replaced it with a new one.

I'm not really a watch person and had never heard of a cannon pinion, but apparently it is an important part of the movement.

The movement is the Breitling B01. Which is supposed to be very good. My question: For those of you that would know, have you ever heard of this occurring with a new watch?

I know any part can at some point be defective. It just seems their QC would or should be better, especially with the B01 movement.

Your thoughts?

The cannon pinion is the central piece that the hands attach to, so yes it's pretty vital to the watch's operation. I can't say I've ever heard of a manufacturing fault in that area, but as you rightly say, anything that's manufactured can have faults no matter how rare. Without additional information on the defect it's kind of hard to say whether QC should've picked it up, but even if it was possible to pick up the defect, QC itself always has an error rate.

I'm not defending anything here as I know it's an absolute PIA when you're on the receiving end of faults, but unfortunately nothing is ever 100% all of the time. I think you have just been unlucky.

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Driver8

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