The Microsoft project is a way of figuring out current upper wind conditions from data available from the aircraft that fly at those upper altitudes ... which i

The Microsoft project is a way of figuring out current upper wind conditions from data available from the aircraft that fly at those upper altitudes ... which is pretty cool, but doesn't help plan fuel loads by itself. For that you would have to use those derived wind speeds to generate a better forecast. You need to know what the winds are going to do in the future. Getting the upper wind forecast wrong doesn't cause a crash. At the most it might cause a diversion. The Microsoft idea has nothing to do with the sort of bad weather that people think might of been an issue with Flight QZ8501. That bad weather mostly consists of thunderstorms which are small unpredictable areas of vertical air movement. Drones are not likely to be of much help here as they normally operate at low altitudes.