Controller was off and Mavic Air didn't returned to home

coffeetea · Mar 10, 2019

Hi all,

My controller was uncharged and off when I was flying above the Atlantic ocean from one Iceland beach.
Mavic Air was on 19 meters attitude, 370 meters from the Home point, had 20% battery and Return To Home attituded = 30 meters.
Signal lost was set as Return To Home (by default).

Here are the logs of the flight:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
Airdata Logs View

I don't have Care Refresh, but it's weird that the drone didn't return to home.

So, my question: is there any chance to get a new aircraft in my case?

Thanks.

Thomas B · Mar 10, 2019

Never hurts to try. All they can say is yes or no. Likely if you are out of warranty they will argue or maybe offer a discount. I am assuming they will accept your logs as proof and that they indicate a fly away.

BD0G · Mar 10, 2019

Perhaps @sar104 can have a look at the flight log for you and offer some insight.

sar104 · Mar 10, 2019

It looks like it should have made it back - just about:

Based on the rate of depletion of the battery and the land_battery level for the altitude it was at, it would have been home at around 760 s, which is 48 s before autoland would have kicked in.

But that is if it had just kept heading home. If it stopped for any length of time when it lost signal, or tried to retrace its flight path for 60 s (that seems like it shouldn't have happened though because it the battery level was already below the goHome level), or if the headwind that was present towards the end picked up then it would have run out of steam and autolanded short of the home point.

coffeetea · Apr 10, 2019

Thanks guys and especially you @sar104 for your investigation.

So do you think I should try to write to DJI support or that doesn't make sense?

sar104 · Apr 10, 2019

coffeetea said:
Thanks guys and especially you @sar104 for your investigation.

So do you think I should try to write to DJI support or that doesn't make sense?

I think that they will conclude that it had insufficient battery to return, probably due to a headwind. If it is still under warranty then it's always worth asking though.