I am so grateful to those of you who shared your bad experiences with Breitling on this thread. I took heed of someone's good advice, and copied the adverse comments on this thread to Breitling's UK customer service department in order to resolve my own warranty issues with them. Breitling responded to me in writing albeit extremely defensively - as they have always done. My warranty repair work has now been carried out though FOC.
Whilst I feel a whole lot happier than I did when I first went into dispute with them, I'm sad it took almost a year for them to see reason. Commercial aviators and the military probably provide a very large customer base to them but needless to say, I for one, won't be recommending Breitling watches to any friends and fellow aviators.