TURN and face the change General aviation today looks a lot like it did 40 years ago-but change is afoot BY THOMAS B. HAINES I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y M AT T H E R R I N G BUFFING THE SPINNER OF A BEECHCRAFT BONANZA A36, one can't help but wonder what is in store for this old girl, built during the Nixon administration. At 47, she's just about the average age of an airplane in the GA fleet. Did those designers back in the mid1940s when the Bonanza was conceived-and the production-line workers in late 1971 who hand-built Serial Number E-292-ever believe that this aircraft would still be flying nearly a half-century later? Now on her third engine, second paint job and interior, and after several panel upgrades, she is as sporting as ever and as capable as anything rolling out of Wichita, or anywhere else, today. There is no reason she can't still be flying in the mid-twenty-first century and beyond-certainly beyond AOPA's 100th anniversary in 2039. www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 77