As volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier drifts across Europe, we were struck by the gallows humour of this email, which arrived yesterday from a Crikey reader:

In a previous life I had occasion to see the maintenance report on a British Airways 747 that flew through the plume of an Indonesian volcanic eruption in 1982.

Typically, a 747 maintenance report resembles your common-or-garden telephone white pages in terms of length, readability and overall ability to pique the reader’s interest.

In what can only be described as a classic example of droll understatement and unequivocal brevity, the BA maintenance report consisted of a single piece of paper on which the chief engineer had recommended, “Replace engines 1, 2, 3 and 4.”

It places the annoying inconvenience of air travellers and the financial losses of airlines in a certain kind of simple perspective.