How The Beechcraft Bonanza Plane Earned The Nickname 'Doctor Killer'

There are some weird nicknames out there in the aviation sphere. You've got the McDonnell XF-85 "Goblin," named for its comically stubby and unorthodox appearance. You've also got the Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter (LCF) "Dreamlifter," which — in addition to sounding like a swanky adjustable mattress — is one of the strangest Boeing aircraft ever made. Even the famed Boeing 737 is known to some as the "Guppy." But perhaps no aircraft has a wilder, more sinister nickname than the iconic Beechcraft Bonanza.

Now, the Bonanza could have received a fun or silly name. Something like the Beech "Banana." After all, how awful could a plane that shares a name with the long-running American Western-themed television series be? Try being too angry while listening to the toe-tapping theme music of "Bonanza." Go ahead. All jokes aside, the nickname bestowed on the interestingly shaped, single-engine, four-seater airplane is the "Doctor Killer." Seriously. Of course, small plane crashes happen more often than you might think, but the Bonanza's nickname was forged by a high body count of well-to-do casualties.

Granted, "Doctor Killer" is not the most imaginative nickname. To be fair, sometimes the moniker stretches out to "fork-tail Doctor Killer" or "V-tail Doctor Killer" to include its most readily identifiable feature. But before you start thinking of a Stephen King-esque demon airplane with an appetite for medical professionals, the name is the result of a pretty nasty record. Specifically, the Model 35 Bonanza had a fatal accident rate of 4.90 per 100,000 hours through 1952, over twice that of a comparable Cessna 195.

So, what was up with the Bonanza and how did that name come to be? For starters, educated professionals like doctors and lawyers could swing the $7,975 price tag back in 1947 — that's around $119,100 in today's money. As a result, the handsome, V-tailed Beechcraft Bonanza was a favorite for affluent aviators without a surplus of experience. Most early flying in the Bonanza was done with visual flight rules (VFR), meaning those pilots weren't well-versed in instrument flight rules (IFR). You know, the sort of flying that helps in bad weather.

In addition to inexperienced pilots, the the Federal Aviation Administration investigated the V-tail in the 1980s and found that the design was periodically prone to failure, although that was more often than not related to flying the Bonanza in inclement weather. A record of high-profile incidents didn't help. In 1947, a bad-weather Bonanza crash killed Oregon Governor Earl Snell along with the Oregon secretary of state and the president of the state senate. Then you've got "The Day the Music Died," referring to the 1959 Bonanza crash that killed music legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. That crash also occurred in poor weather.

Check this out, though: while the Bonanza gets a bad rap, a 1994 AOPA Air Safety Foundation analysis showed that 73% of crashes in the V-tail model were the result of pilot error. That same evaluation found the Bonanza itself to be the cause of crashes just 15% of the time. And, over the years, the Bonanza only got safer. With V-tail assembly failures in mind, later Bonanzas got fixes like a stabilizer reinforcement kit to keep things together.

Continuing the trend of eccentric design and pilot error issues, the Bonanza had a bizarrely high frequency of gear-up landings and retracting landing gear while already on the ground due to a confounding gear switch. To combat the issue, later Bonanzas got a more distinctive landing gear switch and the sort of "squat switches" that make it all but impossible to retract the landing gear while it's already compressed by the Bonanza's weight.

Think you can handle one yourself? Depending on factors like condition and engine time, you can sink your teeth into a V-tailed "Doctor Killer" for around $250,000 to $300,000. However, an older Bonanza can be had for under $100,000. Just make sure you keep a budget for fines if you plan to fly penis-shaped flight paths in your "Doctor Killer."