The Laco Frankfurt GMT takes a design built for 1930s cockpits and gives it a job most cockpits never needed: keeping track of two time zones at once. Laco has been building German pilot watches since 1925, and the brand's fingerprints are all over the original B-Uhr flieger watches carried by WWII navigators — oversized, legible, built to be read at a glance under pressure. The Frankfurt GMT keeps that DNA intact and adds a genuinely modern complication on top of it, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds. You can read more about that history on the Laco brand page.

A Pilot Watch Built for Two Time Zones

The defining feature here is the GMT hand — a fourth hand that tracks a second time zone independently while your primary hour and minute hands keep local time exactly as they would on any other flieger. Set it once against your home time zone, and you've got a running reference point no matter where you land. That's a genuinely useful function for frequent travelers, remote workers coordinating across regions, and anyone who's tired of doing time-zone math on a plane. It's also a function that a lot of GMT watches treat as an excuse to redesign the whole dial around a travel gimmick. The Frankfurt GMT Schwarz doesn't do that — it adds the complication without cluttering the layout that made flieger watches legible in the first place, which is really the whole point of putting a GMT hand on a pilot watch rather than just a generic sport watch.

Classic Flieger Design Details, Still Intact

Strip away the GMT function and you're left with a genuine German pilot watch, not a design that's been reverse-engineered to look like one. Bold Arabic numerals, a large triangle marker at 12 o'clock for instant orientation, luminous hands and markers for low-light cockpits, and a clean dial layout with nothing decorative competing for your attention — these are the same instrument-panel priorities that defined the originals nearly a century ago. Laco's broader pilot watch collection runs this same playbook across different case sizes and dial variants, and it's worth browsing if the Frankfurt GMT's automatic movement and added complication push it slightly outside what you're looking for right now.

Where the Frankfurt GMT Sits in Laco's Catalog

Laco's lineup runs from genuinely entry-level to serious collector territory, and the Frankfurt GMT sits closer to the latter thanks to its added function. If you want the classic flieger experience without the GMT complication, the Augsburg is the model most new collectors land on first — our full review covers why it's such a common recommendation as a first mechanical pilot watch. For a Type B dial with hours on an inner ring and minutes on the outer track — a genuinely different read on the classic format — the Aachen is worth a look too. Comparing them side by side is a good way to figure out how much complication you actually want in a daily pilot watch versus how much you're buying for the history alone.

GMT Watches Beyond Laco

If a second time zone display is the feature you actually care about, it's worth knowing the Frankfurt GMT isn't operating in a vacuum. Watch Gang's Zodiac GMT collection takes the same dedicated-GMT-hand approach in a different aesthetic direction — bolder, more sport-oriented, less rooted in aviation history. Neither approach is objectively better; it depends on whether you want your travel watch to look like it belongs in a cockpit or on a dive boat. That's a useful comparison to make before committing to a specific reference, since the GMT function itself works roughly the same way across both.

Who the Frankfurt GMT Is Best For

This watch makes the most sense for people who actually travel across time zones on a regular basis and want that function built into a watch they'd wear anyway, not bolted onto something flashier. It's also a solid pick for collectors who already appreciate flieger design and want one piece in the collection that does more than tell local time. New collectors exploring mechanical watches for the first time will find the automatic movement and aviation heritage easy to appreciate even without needing the GMT function daily — sometimes a complication is worth owning just because it's there when you need it.

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Final Thoughts

The Laco Frankfurt GMT works because it refuses to pick between heritage and function — it keeps the legible, instrument-panel dial that made flieger watches useful in the first place, and it adds a travel complication that actually earns its place on the wrist. For collectors who want a pilot watch that does more than look the part, it's a strong option to explore. Ready to see what else is out there? Join Watch Gang and start discovering watches built for real life on the move.