Anyone ever tells you an airplane on mars would be a waste of a mission - show them this picture. Like a helicopter view!

(and yes, I'm one of those who has opposed an aerial mission in the past). Without being hypocritical I think it's fair to say that it wasn't time for one then, but is now - we have a better range of ground truth and a better feel for calibrating high res satellite to medium res aerial/ground observation and inferring geological processes from that combination.

And the overwhelming need is still for a high-capacity communications relay to suck all the feed from the aerial vehicle before it crashes, then play back to Earth over the next few days in glorious technicolour...