Good points, Desert. But the Airbus news piece does say
an A340-300, with the AVOID technology fitted, flew towards the ash cloud identifying and measuring it from around 60km away.
That suggests to me that it wasn't close enough to get damaged.
Also
To be begin with (sic) the ash cloud was visible to the naked eye but dissipated quickly becoming difficult to identify.
So maybe this really is 'before' rather than 'after the fact'