Fly Away

[MoToad]

What exactly does fly away mean? Is that the same as being lost? If my M3C takes a hike over the mountain and doesn't home, is that a fly away? And will it be relaced by Refresh?

 

[msinger]

What exactly does fly away mean?

It's most often used when a pilot cannot explain the cause for a lost drone. And in most cases, the cause ends up being some type of pilot error.

 

[FLDave]

If you lost your drone and can't retrieve it due to a flight issue it will most likely be replaced under DJI Care Refresh at a cost listed in your Care Refresh contract.
On the other hand if the cause was due to DJI defect then the resolution would be different.

 

[Dale D]

It's most often used when a pilot cannot explain the cause for a lost drone. And in most cases, the cause ends up being some type of pilot error.

My Care Refresh allows for a replacement of my Mavic 3 for the cost of $700 if it flies away. Each drone has its own compensation schedule. For me, $700 is a lot cheaper than $2000.

 

[JoelP]

I have been flying DJI drones for about 6 years and never have had a fly away and believed that a fly away was always due to pilot error. About 2 years ago my Mavic Air 1 was about .25 miles away and flew over a cell tower then stopped responding to my stick commands as it continued to fly away. It failed to respond to my RTH command for a couple more minutes but continued to broadcast an image. I then put it into sport mode and applied vertical stick until that got a response, allowing me to fly it home. Perhaps some would say it was pilot error to not realize I was flying over a cell tower, but such things can happen to anyone; you can lose control. It is hard to say if continued flight away from the home point would have lost the connection and triggered an RTH, but it provided a reminder to me about the potential for fly away.

 

[Meta4]

I have been flying DJI drones for about 6 years and never have had a fly away and believed that a fly away was always due to pilot error. About 2 years ago my Mavic Air 1 was about .25 miles away and flew over a cell tower then stopped responding to my stick commands as it continued to fly away. It failed to respond to my RTH command for a couple more minutes but continued to broadcast an image. I then put it into sport mode and applied vertical stick until that got a response, allowing me to fly it home. Perhaps some would say it was pilot error to not realize I was flying over a cell tower, but such things can happen to anyone; you can lose control. It is hard to say if continued flight away from the home point would have lost the connection and triggered an RTH, but it provided a reminder to me about the potential for fly away.

Often what a flyer thinks happened is quite different from what actually happened.
Did you have anyone look at the flight data to confirm what happened in that flight?

As described, the incident sounds quite unlikely.
Cell towers normally have no effect on drones and there's no way they could do anything more than swamp the control signal and initiate Failsafe RTH (worst case scenario).
They could not cause the drone to "fly away".

 

[Meta4]

What exactly does fly away mean?

In the early days of drone flying, people had no way to find out what happened to cause the loss of their drone and without a good understanding of how drones work,commonly believed that it just "flew away".
If you lost your drone without understanding why, you just said that it flew away and most people would accept that.

In 2015 DJI released drones that record flight data, which allowed us to see what actually happened in a flight incident and very often find the cause, and sometimes even find the lost drone.
From analysing lost drone incident data since then, we've found that drones don't just fly away at all.
There is always a cause for a lost drone incident and flyaways are a myth.

 

[Felix le Chat]

I have been flying DJI drones for about 6 years and never have had a fly away and believed that a fly away was always due to pilot error. About 2 years ago my Mavic Air 1 was about .25 miles away and flew over a cell tower then stopped responding to my stick commands as it continued to fly away. It failed to respond to my RTH command for a couple more minutes but continued to broadcast an image. I then put it into sport mode and applied vertical stick until that got a response, allowing me to fly it home. Perhaps some would say it was pilot error to not realize I was flying over a cell tower, but such things can happen to anyone; you can lose control. It is hard to say if continued flight away from the home point would have lost the connection and triggered an RTH, but it provided a reminder to me about the potential for fly away.

It's still a mystery why these events happen, but having witnessed one firsthand and having had one myself, I can say that in both instances there were high powered electrical installations in close proximity and direct line of sight. The change-of-trousers event led me to look into the phenomenon, which genuinely looked like my Mavic was being flown by someone else who had turned it 180 degrees, climbed by 100-odd feet and was flying full bore straight towards a multi kilowatt pylon. No loss of signal, so no RTH. No response to stick inputs. Tried everything and got ready to try CCS as a last resort. Finally tried the one thing I hadn't and flicked the side switch from "P' to 'S' and got stick control back long enough for me to drop it safely into the long grass of a pasture. Really knocked my confidence for quite a while.

Plus side is that I now pay a lot of attention to site recon before I head out to a location

 

[Meta4]

The change-of-trousers event led me to look into the phenomenon, which genuinely looked like my Mavic was being flown by someone else who had turned it 180 degrees, climbed by 100-odd feet and was flying full bore straight towards a multi kilowatt pylon.

Genuinely looked like ..??
And what did the recorded flight data show?

 

[JoelP]

Often what a flyer thinks happened is quite different from what actually happened.
Did you have anyone look at the flight data to confirm what happened in that flight?

As described, the incident sounds quite unlikely.
Cell towers normally have no effect on drones and there's no way they could do anything more than swamp the control signal and initiate Failsafe RTH (worst case scenario).
They could not cause the drone to "fly away".

I should go back and try to find the flight data for the flight. My memory is that I had an electrical interference error msg prior to losing control, but I no longer recall the detail of the msg. I got such messages often with the MA1 when flying near a strip mall. In this case I was over both a cell tower and high tension lines. I didn’t think that high tension power lines could be the cause since drones are regularly used to inspect high tension line towers. I cannot say with certainty the root cause.