DE - Notlanden - Make an Emergency Landing

As this is my first post on this blog I'll explain my initial set up and intentions. This is an activity to help me learn languages, and build my vocabulary, but also maybe to help you, my reader, to do the same.

As you see above, the title of my post has an unusual format. It starts with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two letter country code for the language of today's article. Today, the article is in German, so the code is DE. Even if it were written in, say, Austria, I would still use DE. The same goes for Spanish (ES), Portugues (PT), etc. I will use the corresponding code to represent the language of the article to be discussed regardless of the fact that these codes actually represent countries, it's a short hand I have used for a few years when I make notes on new words, so I will continue it here.

The second portion of the title is a word essential to the article, and personally interesting to me. More than likely it will be a new word in my vocabulary in that language. Lastly, the third portion is the translation into English. This pattern will be followed with all future entries, unless I come up with something I judge to be better.

I will try to properly label each entry so that in the long run the labels actually serve some purpose. This is something I've not been able to do so well on my other blogs.

The entries will begin with the headline as given in the source. I will encode the source URL as hyperlinks within the article headline. I recognize that all articles will not remain available on their links, but completely copying articles is full-on infringement of copyright.

Following the headline I will include my translation, which as I make forays into newer languages can potentially be incorrect, but I will do my best to be accurate. However, to reiterate, this is a learning exercise for me. If any of you readers speak a foreign language I would be glad to accept submissions in languages you know.

At minimum two more sections will make up each post. A summary in English about the article, written by me (or the submitter), and a vocabulary section with 10 or so vocabulary words from the article.

Lastly a final section which may or may not be included on every post will contain commentary in English or even the target language, and maybe it will contain a few of my favorite quotes from the article.

I hope you respond and make comments, and most importantly, share my blog with your friends and encourage them to comment and share.

So, on to today's article from Spiegel Online:

Totalausfall der Bordelektronik

Passagierflugzeug muss in Russland notlanden

Complete Failure of Avionics - Passenger Plane Must Make Emergency Landing in Russia

The headline pretty much sums it up, but on with some details. Three-and-a-half hours into the flight and at an elevation of 10,000 meters, the instrumentation on board the plane went out. The pilot had to land at a military base 1500 km northwest of Moscow. The brake flaps didn't work, so the pilot had to make a high speed landing onto a runway that was too short for the large plane. The plane slid more than 600 feet through bushes and trees before coming to a stop. All 81 passengers survived.

Aussteigen - to get off (plane,bus)
die Bremsklappen - brake flaps
der Flügel - wing
die Geschwindigkeit - speed, velocity
die Landebahn - runway
die Notlandung - emergency landing
uberleben - to survive
das Wunder - miracle

As I read this I wondered, is there nothing closer to the location of the incident to give an idea of where this happened? 1500 km is over 900 miles. That's like describing an incident which happened in Buffalo, New York in relation to Atlanta, Georgia. I did like the description of how the plane mowed over the trees and bushes like a lawn mower ("wie ein Rasenmäher"), and its good every one survived.

I hope you survived our first time reading together.