Back in the 70’s me and my little brother were flying unaccompanied for the first time on a direct flight from San Antonio to Cleveland. I was 11 and he was 9.
Well we took off from SA and on the climb up an engine caught fire and filled the cabin with smoke.
We land just fine in Dallas. A stewardess took charge of us and we spent four hours in the pilots lounge until the next fight.
While landing in Georgia we lost all hydrolic pressure.
Another 4 hour wait.
They told us our parents would be informed of our delays. They were not and my mother was screaming at people in the Cleveland airport. They would only tell her the flight had been “delayed”. Twice. She though we crashed and they would not tell her.

I would rather have flown through the volcano like they did.

As I recall, the pilot thought he was flying into a regular cloud. My guess is that the experience of British Airways Flight 9 helped him figure out the truth of his predicament.