BEECHCRAFT BONANZA

One of the descendents of the plane that created the modern high-performance segment, the straight-tail F33 Bonanza was derived from the first Model 35 V-tail Bonanza, which came to market almost 75 years ago.

As mentioned in the introduction, the Beech Bonanza came into the world in 1947 pretty much fully formed, a four-seat, retractable-gear, all-metal, lightweight, lower-powered single-engine transportation airplane. It's not a stretch to say that the Bonanza created the segment. It was inarguably a revolutionary airplane. In an era where its principal competitors were taildraggers, some of them tube-and-rag relics, all of them with round engines, the Bonanza was the in-your-face product designed for a world on the other side of a war that changed everything. It was intended to be economical, light, slick and fast, giving private pilots an airplane in which they could go places and take a few folks with them.

Though it has been continuously produced for nearly 75 years now, the plane has evolved greatly over time, to the point where today's Bonanza is a very different aircraft than the original. A switch to a straight tail was perhaps the most gradual component phase-out in aviation history, with the introduction of the first non-V-tail Bonanza, the Debonair, in 1960, and the last V-tail model finally phased out in 1982. So the idea of a straight-tail Bonanza is hardly shocking.

In fact, it's safe to say that, for many years, the state of Bonanza art has been the Model 36 Bonanza, a straight-tail, six-seater that is a much larger and more capable airplane than the original. Along the way, there were a number of different Bonanzas, but since at least the late 1950s when the V-35 got bigger engines and more modern, constant-speed props, the plane went from being a relatively lightweight flyer to a substantial single with a maximum weight a thousand pounds greater than the original and cruise speeds almost 20 knots greater. All of that was driven by customer preference, and for good reason. High-performance planes are intended to go fast, carry a good load and go a long way, all of which the Bonanza excelled at.

The Bonanza was always long-legged, with the original boasting about 700 statute miles of range, another one of the revolutionary design precepts that set the bar high for coming competitors, a design element that required that the Bonanza get bigger to hold enough fuel for its thirstier engines to get the expected range or better, which they did.

Modern High-Performance Singles

J BeckettWriter