Which authority should I contact in the event of a flyaway?

[Meta4]

Why is reporting a flyaway (I provided a definition earlier so you know what I mean by flyaway.) to the NTSB so ridiculous to you and others on this thread? While it has been stated that there are many reasons for a flyaway, I have never experienced one. Nor have other pilots I know.

Because a "flyaway" is a completely meaningless term.
Here's a typical example of something just reported as a flyaway:

Mavic Mini "Flyaway" - forensic help requested

I took my Mavic Mini hiking to a waterfall last weekend. Getting a good GPS lock is difficult in a waterfall amphitheater, so I got it flying and hovered it as high as it would let me (hoping that would be more likely to get a signal up higher). I let it sit there for several minutes while it...

mavicpilots.com

Almost everything that gets called a flyaway is just a confused or disoriented drone flyer and reporting such incidents would be absurd, just like this thread has become.

 

[Ty Pilot]

Why is reporting a flyaway (I provided a definition earlier so you know what I mean by flyaway.) to the NTSB so ridiculous to you and others on this thread? While it has been stated that there are many reasons for a flyaway, I have never experienced one. Nor have other pilots I know.

The problem is millions of drone pilots like yourself are free to claim any unexplained event as a 'flyaway' without actually knowing for certain that is what happened - thus the term has no meaning because as has been shown on this forum - every crash or loss of drone that is not understood; can become a flyaway.

On this forum, there is a topic where pilots can get help with understanding why their drone crashed. It is interesting to note that after reading hundreds of drone crash events for years, there are common threads to a majority of the reports.

1. Most pilots faced in the heat of the moment with a potential loss of their drone begin to have tunnel vision, causing them to not fully understand what is actually happening in the moment, or recount what happened later.
2. Many pilots are unaware of all of the operational aspects of their drone in situations they have never encountered and are unprepared for them when they do occur thus adding to the confusion.
3. These two aspects cause a very large percentage of pilots who experience a loss to be almost certain (since it hasn't happened to them before), "something" must have gone wrong with the drone to cause the loss.
4. Without knowledge of what actually happened, and without understanding how their equipment will react the crash becomes labeled as a fly away.

As I was writing this, @Meta4 posted an example of the problem with the term fly away.

 

[Ty Pilot]

Interestingly enough, if I am not mistaken, the crash example just posted by @Meta4 is the same as what happened in the Las Vegas scenario discussed earlier. One in which a pilot, is not sure if their drone is fully ready for flight before liftoff, but proceeds anyway. Then as the drone exhibit's behavior they are unfamiliar with and are unprepared for, the resulting crash is labeled as a "flyaway"

In the waterfall case above, the drone went to Atti mode (as it should when it cannot get a GPS lock), and was completely controllable - the controls did not malfunction, the pilot was simply unaware of what to expect and was not prepared to take proper corrective action, but make no mistake - that is not a flyaway.

 

[GFields]

This thread has pretty much run its course. It's time to agree to disagree.