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В данном случае не имеется в виду какой-то конкретный самолет, поэтому употребляется неопределенный артикль: "I can't [cannot] fly without an airplane [a plane]"
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I'm not so sure. A sentence about airplanes in general would be a more common thing to say. But you could think up less likely examples where someone would talk about a specific plane and could use "the" (eg a rich person dramatically insisting on flying in their own private plane). I think the Russian translation would be the same.
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It's possible a specific plane would be indicated via word order: "Без самолёта я не умею летать," but my hunch is that this is probably pushing the logic of Russian word order a bit far. Hopefully a native speaker will comment.
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Well, there are no articles in Russian. When you translate from Russian to English, you have to understand what the Russian phrase implies, so you can properly sprinkle the English equivalent with articles. :) This particular sentence implies "one of many planes, any plane", so it should be translated as "a plane".
Since Russian uses declensions, you can change the order of words rather freely without losing the meaning. You can play with the building blocks of this sentence -- "я", "без самолёта", "летать", "не умею" -- like below:
Я не умею летать без самолета.
Я без самолета не умею летать.
Я летать не умею без самолета.
Я летать без самолета не умею.
Без самолета не умею летать я.
Без самолета я летать не умею.
Без самолета я не умею летать.
Без самолета летать я не умею.
Летать не умею я без самолета.
Летать я без самолета не умею.
Летать без самолета не умею я.
Летать без самолета я не умею.
All these sentences deliver the same meaning in Russian, with slight stylistic differences. I hope this helps. :)
I was told by a native speaker that уметь has the sense "know how to", not physical possibility, which would be мочь. But there may be regional differences. Could a native speaker comment?
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"Уметь" is somewhere between "know how" and "physical possibility". The former is "знать как", the latter is "мочь". "Уметь" in the other hand is more like "have the knowledge and the skill to" rather than just theoretical knowledge. It's not regional differences, it's just that the English language doesn't have a direct counterpart to "уметь", so different native Russian speakes try to explain it differently to the best of their understanding of what "can" and "know how" mean :)
Thanks! Now all I have to figure out is which will be demanded in each question. ((
