Originally Posted by thermostat
Stay away from CBs at any altitude but more so at high altitude and arrive alive.
It has been a few years since I roamed the high altitudes with frequently unreliable radars in my military jet, and your statement is very true, but sometimes difficult to fully implement.
Solitary cells are easy to circumnavigate. When they shoulder together in lines and large areas it becomes more problematic. The upper ice crystal portions of Cb clouds are weak radar targets. Although radars can be very helpful, they can also degrade or be mismanaged. When that happens, as it seems may have happened in the AF447 case, it is almost inevitable that you may get closer to a cell or cells than you wished. From the turbulence encountered-judging from the BEA report-they did not fly into the core of a cell, but instead into a peripheral area. But it was close enough to cause a problem.
Sometimes you do not succeed in breaking the first link in the accident chain. For this reason, you should break as many other links in the chain as possible. That is the source of the chatter you remarked upon.
We cannot absolutely avoid some proximity to Cb cells. To attempt to do so would shut down large portions of the world's air commerce. It isn't going to happen.