There may be considerable difficulty in avoiding storm cells in that part of the world, particularly if there's a broad band of them.
I've been through the ITCZ many times en-route to Ascension. Sometimes you've just got to to for the 'Least Bad' option as depicted by your wx radar/Mk1 eyeball. Not fun.
No-one here on this forum, or elsewhere it seems, knows what happened so some of the crass comments appearing here are way out of line.
RIP to all involved.