This article really demonstrates the level of idiocy that armchair experts contribute to the discussion. It's as if the author had to publish a piece on the dis

This article really demonstrates the level of idiocy that armchair experts contribute to the discussion. It's as if the author had to publish a piece on the disappearance and use it to generate as many click bait responses as possible. Firstly, for ground covered aircraft there is already extensive weather radar (the same used to demonstrate clouds on your tv's weather graphics on the evening news) which shows what is happening live. This is tracked by most airline operators and the hotspots can be rerouted from central if necessary. Secondly most newer aircraft have a forward looking weather radar that can warn them as the plane flies of the immediate vicinity (though they don't have full visibility of what's on the other side). At the very least they can use this to do what happened here; request a variation in the path of the flight. Thirdly the main problem of weather is in areas not covered by weather radar. This is where drones would be most useful; but that is also the problem: they need sufficient fuel to get them to stay in or around one place and unless there is automated return to base and refuelling options it isn't going to happen. Fourthly the planet is big. Really big. You may think it's a long way down to the chemist at the end of the street etc. the point is knowing what the weather is like tens of miles away isn't really that useful for identifying the kind of cells causing bad weather which are generally known about in any case. To get the kind of required resolution you either have to have lots and lots of them, or send a leading drone out in front of the aircraft's intended path waving a red flag. Except to do that it has to fly at a similar speed to the jet which means each drone is going to cost many millions In hardware and fuel for each flight. Lastly no pilot is going to want to fly through a mid air drone field because the chance of disaster occurring due to high speed impact with a stationary object is much higher than that of suffering weather damage. The reason planes fly at different altitudes depending on which direction they are travelling is to avoid meeting traffic coming the other way; generally because if you notice it it's already too late to avoid it.