Aviation and flight operations

Die Gangway looks like a word a British reader already owns, and that is exactly where it misleads. In a theatre, on a bus or in the Commons, a gangway is the passage between two blocks of seats. German never uses it for that: the passage down the middle of the cabin is der Gang, and an aisle seat is ein Gangplatz. Die Gangway is outside the aircraft. It is the flight of steps driven up to the door when the aircraft stands out on das Vorfeld, so über die Gangway aussteigen means walking down in the open air and usually taking a bus to the terminal. The word keeps its English spelling and pronunciation and takes a German plural, die Gangways. The one sense the two languages share is the gangplank of a ship. At an airport it is the stairs, and the covered walkway straight from the terminal is another word altogether: die Fluggastbrücke.