Not every airline crew is without wifi. It's new technology, it will take time, but eventually it will be adopted by other companies.
Our OpsSpecs permit internet usage precisely for this reason, route planning/weather avoidance.
I was flying that night, going the same direction, planned through the same area, in the same type of aircraft. The radar via internet sources looked absolutely nasty. My dispatcher saw the same thing with his weather source and we decided to go to the north instead of picking our way south of that line.
Once we got in range and tried to paint the system in radar it really didn't look bad. Seriously, I've picked my way through worse looking stuff. Another flight noted the same thing on center frequency, saying they really weren't painting anything. Yet another flight, remarked a little later that they had flown through it and it "was the worst of his career". He also asked if there had been any reports of hail damage to aircraft. Maybe he had heard about the Delta flight? Not sure.
GA certainly has better resources available. The 121 world is slow to adopt, but it's coming.
FWIW
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