Volcanoes and aviation:

Matthew Powell writes: Re. “Ashes and angst as airlines navigate holes in the clouds” (yesterday, item 5). In response to Ben Sandilands’ article, 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.”

Education:

Gary Bass, secondary teacher, writes: I have a few difficulties with Marcus L’Estrange’s recollection (yesterday, comments), and a few facts. Only part one of the VCE was ever enacted. Recall  the “Jeffing” that took place when 8000 teachers were left unemployed and over 250 schools were closed.

Another factor absent in L’Estrange’s analysis about those times was the move to make ALL secondary schools comprehensive. But all that was done by Jeff Kennett was the closing of technical schools, without the re-equipping of the high schools.

Also recall that the apprentice system that tech schools were put in place to serve, had been over taken by the high schools in providing students for apprenticeships. Technical schools in that form were serving no-one. High schools in their current form also leave out a large cohort of potential students who are not being catered to.

Carl Williams:

Jenny Batesman writes: If you have nothing nice to say about some-one don’t say anything at all, but leave it up to the qualified experts who can analyse criminals like this family. That is not about to happen sadly in today’s world of social networking and the internet.