Man almost catches delayed plane (7)
I believe the answer is:
plateau
'plane' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'man almost catches delayed' is the wordplay.
'man' becomes 'p' (abbreviation for pawn, a chess piece or 'man').
'almost' becomes 'au' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'catches' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'delayed' becomes 'late' (I've seen this before).
'p'+'au'='pau'
'pau' placed around 'late' is 'PLATEAU'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for plateau that I've seen before include "Levelling off" , "Flat highland" , "Level outcrop of land" , "Elevated flatland" , "one has no inclination" .)