A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
一次技术故障，让 American Airlines 全美航班一度停飞
One Technical Failure Briefly Grounded Every American Airlines Flight in the U.S.
About this story
A medium Chinese listening story: a technical failure led American Airlines to request a nationwide ground stop, halting every flight for under an hour before a cascade of delays, echoing the recent T-Mobile outage. HSK 3 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 3-4 Chinese listening episode that runs about 1 minute. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 10 key vocabulary words such as 安全、问题、发现 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
American Airlines is one of America's biggest airlines, with tens of thousands of flights a day.
On the evening of July 28th, a technical failure suddenly threw it into disarray.
The company said that that evening, part of its systems' connectivity had a problem.
For safety, American Airlines asked U.S. aviation authorities to temporarily ground all flights.
In other words, for that stretch of time, every American Airlines plane in the whole country was unable to take off.
As word spread, airports everywhere formed long lines, and many passengers were stuck at the gates.
Thankfully, this failure didn't last long, under an hour from start to finish.
Once the systems recovered, planes gradually began taking off again.
But the trouble didn't end right away.
One delayed flight often drags a whole string of later flights with it, so many people missed connections and had their trips disrupted.
So far, American Airlines still hasn't explained where the failure came from.
Just days ago, the U.S. phone company T-Mobile had suffered a big outage too.
One incident after another makes people realize: our lives are already tightly bound up with all kinds of systems.
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇为了安全 = for safety.
连接出了问题 = connectivity had a problem.
让人发现 = makes people realize.
麻烦并没有马上结束 = the trouble didn't end at once.
经历过一次大故障 = went through a big outage.
一场技术故障 = a technical failure.
最大的航空公司之一 = one of the biggest airlines.
技术故障 = a technical failure.
系统的连接 = the systems' connectivity.
暂时停飞所有航班 = temporarily ground all flights.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法也就是说，……
也就是说 = "in other words".
也就是说，全美国的美航飞机，都不能起飞。
一……往往……
一 X 往往 Y = "whenever X, it tends to Y".
一个航班晚点，往往会牵连后面一连串的航班。
Proper Nouns
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