This Sunday evening I was flying my Mavic at a nearby park while my son and daughter watched.  The park has hundreds of acres of fields which I was flying in.  I was about ten minutes into flight with 68% battery life left when I stopped recording to take some stills of my kids at around 6' then took it to 65'.  I was showing my daughter the picture on the screen when I heard the Mavic go silent and the controller said disconnected.  It was directly above us so I grabbed my daughter by the arm and moved away quickly.  It hit the ground on it's belly about 4' from us.  I was in shock.  I thought for sure I had done something wrong, but the flight record shows no stick movement and drops from 65' to 62' and that is it.
The two landing arms in the front are broken and the gimble just cycles back and forth now.  I'm sure there is more internal damage with a fall from that high.  I called DJI today expecting them to be surprised and concerned about what happened due to the safety hazard this presents, but I was told by the first level tech support person that I just needed to go on line and submit a repair request.  Now it is on it's way to DJI but I am worried they will tell me to fly a kite since there is no video at the moment it happened.  This is so disappointing.  I am an experienced pilot, but his is the first $1k+ camera drone I have purchased and have been anxiously waiting for over two months for it to arrive only to watch it fall out of the sky 6 days later.  I will definitely never fly it over people again.

Has any one else had this happen?

...it's way to DJI but I am worried they will tell me to fly a kite since there is no video at the moment it happened.
Dont worry, no need for video.  The mavic has and internal flight data recorder which will show DJI in detail what went on up to the point where it failed and perhpas until it hit the ground.

That's good to hear.  Thanks

That's frightening.  Hopefully it wasn't a Mavic issue and more a freak incident.  Wondering if a large bird attacked it while you were looking at the screen and caused it enough damage to disrupt the flight.  Hopefully its something explainable rather than a random complete drone failure.  Otherwise, we are all just rolling the dice when we fly.

THIS IS SCARY I hope ppl are carrying liability insurance, bc this can cause some SERIOUS damage if not death!

Really sorry to hear about your crash.
Just as Logger said. After received your drone, our engineers will analyse the flight data and let you know what could have caused the issue.
If you have any further query, please feel free to let me know.

Less than 2 sec to fall from 65'. I doubt anybody can react to "go silent" so quick... Suspicious...

Some Karma action here.

seems related to http://forum.dji.com/thread-71911-1-1.html. he just got it repaired.

Great i had a Karma and had to send it back for the very same reason....SOmething else to worry about

I had a Phantom 2 do that and unfortunately I could not send it in because it landed in the ocean and sunk immediately.  At least you can send yours in.  I also had a Phantom 3 lose control and hit a neighbors house after a compass failure and I sent it in and DJI replaced it without charging me.  The problem is that if you get hurt or hurt someone else or someone's property - DJI does not cover that so ya gotta be really careful about where you fly.  Glad nobody was hurt!

Update - DJI repaired it for free and I received it back yesterday.  Unfortunately there is no explanation from DJI as to what caused the loss of power.  I took it to the park today and let it hover 5' off the ground.  After about 11 minutes it lost power again and fell.  While on the ground it powered back up on its own, reconnected to the controller, and gave a battery failure error.  I replaced the battery with a new one and it flew at low altitude until auto landing to low battery.  I wish I could just say it is the battery, but when it lost power the 1st time it was on a different battery.  I guess I will call DJI again and see what they say.  

Ok you Have a defective unit. You need to escalate this and get a replacement not a repair

Guess there was no explanation since they don't seem to know what's wrong and didn't fix the cause, just the resulting damage.

have you doublechecked the serialnumber if the "repair" was an exchange perhaps? because then it would be battery perhaps (more likely)

Yes as bigcheese said double check the serial number to make sure that it is indeed your original drone and not a replacement. If it is your original drone it definitely seems like they just repaired the damaged parts from your first crash and didn't find the root cause of the issue. I would make sure that they send you a new unit this time.

Since this is primarily a safety issue I'd really hope the original was taken out of service and you received a replacement instead.

The only time I've heard of a sudden drop like that is with drone pilots working on cell towers due to the extreme interference.  Even then it's rare.  That just happening in a park with your kids nearby must have been scary.

Not sure where you are flying. Is it particularly cold? Maybe the battery is cutting out due to that...?

I checked the serial number and it is the same unit.  I thought for sure they would replace as well.

The 1st time it was around 45f and the second time was in the low 60s.  I wouldn't think those temps would be a problem.   

I bought the Mavic Pro and have had the device less than two weeks.

Unfortunately, last night (2/28) I was doing a routine flight and the device malfunctioned. I was flying the drone and the screen went blank, showed as completely disconnected on the controller and I lost all visibility.  The battery power was north of 80%. I was less than a quarter-mile from the device. I waited a few minutes for the device to reconnect and it was giving me the same notification paired with a continuous beeping sound.  I then went towards where I believed the drone to be positioned last.  Within 5 minutes of being disconnected the drone was nowhere in sight.  After searching the disconnect site for ten minutes,  a random person approached me with the drone in hand, it was absolutely demolished.  She had explained she was walking her dog and saw the drone crash.  She continued describe the crash, “It went up and down for a few moments and then completely dropped out of the air and smashed on the concrete”, from about 8 stories high, she recalled. This is when she picked it up and saw me searching.  It completely shattered.

This crash was not user error in any way.  There was no notification on the controller or anything alerting any kind of risk whatsoever.  How does DJI deal with these particular circumstances?  It appears online that others have faced these same situations, so I’d expect that there would be something in place for this type of severe malfunction. On top of it, I ordered extra batteries and the pro pack. My hop is DJI will take in consideration that I just received the device two weeks ago and the drone disconnected and dropped out of the sky out of my control.  I bought it specifically for a vacation at the end of this month I've been planning for a year. I've emailed support today and hope than can expedite this asap.

Let me know if anyone has any additional thoughts or insight on this.  Many thanks.

Ryan

Ryan Joe Posted at 2017-3-1 13:53
I bought the Mavic Pro and have had the device less than two weeks.

Unfortunately, last night (2/28) I was doing a routine flight and the device malfunctioned. I was flying the drone and the screen went blank, showed as completely disconnected on the controller and I lost all visibility.  The battery power was north of 80%. I was less than a quarter-mile from the device. I waited a few minutes for the device to reconnect and it was giving me the same notification paired with a continuous beeping sound.  I then went towards where I believed the drone to be positioned last.  Within 5 minutes of being disconnected the drone was nowhere in sight.  After searching the disconnect site for ten minutes,  a random person approached me with the drone in hand, it was absolutely demolished.  She had explained she was walking her dog and saw the drone crash.  She continued describe the crash, “It went up and down for a few moments and then completely dropped out of the air and smashed on the concrete”, from about 8 stories high, she recalled. This is when she picked it up and saw me searching.  It completely shattered.

Sorry to hear about your crash. I'm sure DJI can analyze your flight record and determine the cause. If the flight record showed no input on your part that may have caused this, and a malfunction of the Mavic or battery, hopefully they will cover this under warranty. Probably thousands of Mavics have been manufactured. There will always be a small percentage of defects in any product that will cause a catostaphic  failure.

If you'd like a peer analysis of  your issue, I would recommend downloading the dat file from the Mavic and posting it to Mavicpilots.com. There are many extremely competent pilots on that forum that can be very helpful. That forum appears to be a bit more technical in nature.

Ryan Joe Posted at 2017-3-1 13:53
I bought the Mavic Pro and have had the device less than two weeks.

Unfortunately, last night (2/28) I was doing a routine flight and the device malfunctioned. I was flying the drone and the screen went blank, showed as completely disconnected on the controller and I lost all visibility.  The battery power was north of 80%. I was less than a quarter-mile from the device. I waited a few minutes for the device to reconnect and it was giving me the same notification paired with a continuous beeping sound.  I then went towards where I believed the drone to be positioned last.  Within 5 minutes of being disconnected the drone was nowhere in sight.  After searching the disconnect site for ten minutes,  a random person approached me with the drone in hand, it was absolutely demolished.  She had explained she was walking her dog and saw the drone crash.  She continued describe the crash, “It went up and down for a few moments and then completely dropped out of the air and smashed on the concrete”, from about 8 stories high, she recalled. This is when she picked it up and saw me searching.  It completely shattered.

Sorry to hear about your crash. I'm sure DJI can analyze your flight record and determine the cause. If the flight record showed no input on your part that may have caused this, and a malfunction of the Mavic or battery, hopefully they will cover this under warranty. Probably thousands of Mavics have been manufactured. There will always be a small percentage of defects in any product that will cause a catostaphic  failure.

If you'd like a peer analysis of  your issue, I would recommend downloading the dat file from the Mavic and posting it to Mavicpilots.com. There are many extremely competent pilots on that forum that can be very helpful. That forum appears to be a bit more technical in nature.

Ryan Joe Posted at 2017-3-1 13:53
I bought the Mavic Pro and have had the device less than two weeks.

Unfortunately, last night (2/28) I was doing a routine flight and the device malfunctioned. I was flying the drone and the screen went blank, showed as completely disconnected on the controller and I lost all visibility.  The battery power was north of 80%. I was less than a quarter-mile from the device. I waited a few minutes for the device to reconnect and it was giving me the same notification paired with a continuous beeping sound.  I then went towards where I believed the drone to be positioned last.  Within 5 minutes of being disconnected the drone was nowhere in sight.  After searching the disconnect site for ten minutes,  a random person approached me with the drone in hand, it was absolutely demolished.  She had explained she was walking her dog and saw the drone crash.  She continued describe the crash, “It went up and down for a few moments and then completely dropped out of the air and smashed on the concrete”, from about 8 stories high, she recalled. This is when she picked it up and saw me searching.  It completely shattered.

Sorry to hear about your crash. I'm sure DJI can analyze your flight record and determine the cause. If the flight record showed no input on your part that may have caused this, and a malfunction of the Mavic or battery, hopefully they will cover this under warranty. Probably thousands of Mavics have been manufactured. There will always be a small percentage of defects in any product that will cause a catostaphic  failure.

If you'd like a peer analysis of  your issue, I would recommend downloading the dat file from the Mavic and posting it to Mavicpilots.com. There are many extremely competent pilots on that forum that can be very helpful. That forum appears to be a bit more technical in nature.
Just a word of warning. Always best to let the experts do the analysis without first placing blame. Many pilots quickly place blame on the AC where careful analysis may sometimes show differently. It's amazing the information the Mavic and controllers gather from the flight.

trance728- Posted at 2016-12-21 10:53
Guess there was no explanation since they don't seem to know what's wrong and didn't fix the cause, just the resulting damage.

Or as I suspect, they do know the problem. Probably something they didn't want to find out and especially have it go public thus they quietly repaired his mavic. I've heard many stories here where repairs were denied due to " no logs available to determine cause" excuse. Sure it maybe true but there have been reports of mavic simply falling out of the sky for no reason.
So the fact that Dji repaired without any fuss seems fishy to me.

Hi Everyone, flying my new Mavic yesterday, i was taking some shots of surfers sitting about 10m off the beach and was 7m high so well clear of danger with 78% battery. I switched to active track and selected a target, which then ended up passing under the drone and out of its field of view. Before i even had the chance to turn the drone around, i looked up to see it simply fall out of the sky into the surf. Having thought i was at fault i checked the log and it shows the drone fly into positing hover for 10 seconds then when active track is selected rapidly drop with no record of the joysticks being touched. To my knowledge i haven't done anything to cause the drone to just drop, but thought i would check before going down the faulty unit path with DJI. Is this an issue that can happen with active track?

ab22 - it does say in the manual that flying over water can confuse some of the sensors. (Page 18 and 25)

Also, I'm wondering if there is some sort of interference causing these problems.  What about another similar drone operating in the area?

Did you ever get to bottom of the issue? I just bought a Mavic today and in my 3rd flight I hit return to home and the drone started on its way and then it just dies -- disconnected and came straight down about 50. Ft. Smashes dome, broke a leg and three of props. All within 5 hours of purchase. So disappointed.

Did you ever get to bottom of the issue? I just bought a Mavic today and in my 3rd flight I hit return to home and the drone started on its way and then it just dies -- disconnected and came straight down about 50. Ft. Smashes dome, broke a leg and three of props. All within 5 hours of purchase. So disappointed.

I bought a Mavic and was flying it for the third time over an open field. I had it go up and hover at 125 feet as I had not it go that high. Suddenly,. while hovering with a battery at 80%,  it just dropped from the sky. Fortunately it didn't hit anything, but broke it shattered it,  including the camera. I have sent it back to DJI. I got a repair bill for over $300 or said I could use my DJI Repair and pay $79. I called 3 times to try to explain that this was not operator error and never reached anybody, just put on hold. I finally reached someone and they told me their computer was down and they would call me back.. they never did. I have sent multiple emails complaining that this is a defect and not operator error, and get a reply saying that they are sorry that I had this problem and it is being evaluated, but yet have heard anything back. Essentially there is no one to talk to to get an explanation.  I found this thread and realize that his "falling out of the sky" is a real problem that they have,  but don't own up to. I am out $1100 and have only flown my mavic twice, and can't get them to stand by their product. I would appreciate any advice on what to do to get my Mavic replaced.

fanse622820a Posted at 2017-5-25 18:29
I bought a Mavic and was flying it for the third time over an open field. I had it go up and hover at 125 feet as I had not it go that high. Suddenly,. while hovering with a battery at 80%,  it just dropped from the sky. Fortunately it didn't hit anything, but broke it shattered it,  including the camera. I have sent it back to DJI. I got a repair bill for over $300 or said I could use my DJI Repair and pay $79. I called 3 times to try to explain that this was not operator error and never reached anybody, just put on hold. I finally reached someone and they told me their computer was down and they would call me back.. they never did. I have sent multiple emails complaining that this is a defect and not operator error, and get a reply saying that they are sorry that I had this problem and it is being evaluated, but yet have heard anything back. Essentially there is no one to talk to to get an explanation.  I found this thread and realize that his "falling out of the sky" is a real problem that they have,  but don't own up to. I am out $1100 and have only flown my mavic twice, and can't get them to stand by their product. I would appreciate any advice on what to do to get my Mavic replaced.

Unfortunately the best tool for diagnosing what happened was a (DAT) file on your Mavic, but since you've already sent it in you're essentially at DJI's mercy. Hopefully when they re-review it they'll recognize that it wasn't operator error and offer you a free replacement, but at a minimum they should be willing and able to explain how it was your fault if they still think that it was. I'd insist on such an explanation if they again try to make you pay for a Care Refresh replacement.

In the meantime, though, you should still be able to upload the TXT file for the flight from your mobile device using the instructions here and then provide us a link. That won't have as much information as the DAT file, but we might still be able to provide some useful information.

It would be much more helpful to hear what the exact setup was when these crashes occur.  ie: mavic connected to controller using RC with iphone 6s plus and what app was being used.  Otherwise there are too many variables.

Z2aSsqaTEVxn Posted at 2016-12-12 23:37
That's frightening.  Hopefully it wasn't a Mavic issue and more a freak incident.  Wondering if a large bird attacked it while you were looking at the screen and caused it enough damage to disrupt the flight.  Hopefully its something explainable rather than a random complete drone failure.  Otherwise, we are all just rolling the dice when we fly.

If a bird attacked it it would not be a mavic comming down but bird feet

Hope you get it sorted pal. Sad times.

Hi, the same thing, very scary indeed, happenened to me yesterday, Mavic was hovering at about 100mt altitude, when suddendly it disconnected and fell into the ground. Again this is very scary, if this happens far away you could not only loose the device but you could harm somebody. Now i am returning it for repair, i hope they will not charge me, but beside this i think this is a severe issue.

It sucks hearing all these stories. I have android and it does dissconect often but i think do to where I live. But I have it set to return to home when that happens and I never take off with out setting home point . It always has headed back and then I can regain control and kick off the return to home on app. Hope they can get this figured out soon

dji really needs to fix android app/ecosystem issues.. i been flying both iOS and Android with my dji spark and android is very consistently broken..  not entirely unusable, but i find my samsung S8 will 1x per flight at very least crash the DJi go app..   whereas iOS on my iPad mini 2 was rock solid and stable, only semi crashed once.. by semi crashed i mean the picture froze while app switching back to it and refused to update the frame, but all the speed and map things were working fine, so i was flying blind but knowing my terrain i was able to use the map and speed to trim it and land safely...

dangerous part about android app crashing i found is sometimes with android in particular the crash will cause what i call a command loop, which can trigger a fly away event..basically something stuck in endless loop once crashes still commanding something..  easiest fix Dji could implement, not a fix, but its maybe helpful, is on crash the app just reloads instantly, usually reloading fixes the fly away.. i think iOS maybe immune to command loop crashing because on iOS once an app closes out completely, like via crashing.. it usually is completely removed from memory and cpu cycle time.. at least immune to this style of crashing..  best solution by far for DJi would be to rebuild the app so it doesn't fully crash, just a certain portion may have to reload..  this may obviously limit which andriod OS's they can support, but i mean come on...  most people are not going to be too bothered, specially since even cheap knock off phones come with marshmallow now..

ImHereToCrash Posted at 2017-8-16 09:42
dji really needs to fix android app/ecosystem issues.. i been flying both iOS and Android with my dji spark and android is very consistently broken..  not entirely unusable, but i find my samsung S8 will 1x per flight at very least crash the DJi go app..   whereas iOS on my iPad mini 2 was rock solid and stable, only semi crashed once.. by semi crashed i mean the picture froze while app switching back to it and refused to update the frame, but all the speed and map things were working fine, so i was flying blind but knowing my terrain i was able to use the map and speed to trim it and land safely...

dangerous part about android app crashing i found is sometimes with android in particular the crash will cause what i call a command loop, which can trigger a fly away event..basically something stuck in endless loop once crashes still commanding something..  easiest fix Dji could implement, not a fix, but its maybe helpful, is on crash the app just reloads instantly, usually reloading fixes the fly away.. i think iOS maybe immune to command loop crashing because on iOS once an app closes out completely, like via crashing.. it usually is completely removed from memory and cpu cycle time.. at least immune to this style of crashing..  best solution by far for DJi would be to rebuild the app so it doesn't fully crash, just a certain portion may have to reload..  this may obviously limit which andriod OS's they can support, but i mean come on...  most people are not going to be too bothered, specially since even cheap knock off phones come with marshmallow now..

I understand that it's Android running on the S8, but calling it an Android issue when there are many cases with Samsung having problems isn't really accurate. I see other apps that for some reason, don't run well on Samsung's OS?  I'm running an HTC U11 on 7.1.1 stock and have not had 1 crash at all.

Pumavic Posted at 2017-8-16 19:20
I understand that it's Android running on the S8, but calling it an Android issue when there are many cases with Samsung having problems isn't really accurate. I see other apps that for some reason, don't run well on Samsung's OS?  I'm running an HTC U11 on 7.1.1 stock and have not had 1 crash at all.

it could be Samsung related issue, but i doubt it.  my guess is its related to the new aspect ratios or to higher pixel densities..  my reasoning is because i can tweak my PPI to 430 or less and the crashing stops and i can also force 16:9 ratio instead of 18:9 with a custom resolution (2560 x 1440 instead of 2960 x 1440) and it cures the crashing..

ImHereToCrash Posted at 2017-8-16 09:42
dji really needs to fix android app/ecosystem issues.. i been flying both iOS and Android with my dji spark and android is very consistently broken..  not entirely unusable, but i find my samsung S8 will 1x per flight at very least crash the DJi go app..   whereas iOS on my iPad mini 2 was rock solid and stable, only semi crashed once.. by semi crashed i mean the picture froze while app switching back to it and refused to update the frame, but all the speed and map things were working fine, so i was flying blind but knowing my terrain i was able to use the map and speed to trim it and land safely...

dangerous part about android app crashing i found is sometimes with android in particular the crash will cause what i call a command loop, which can trigger a fly away event..basically something stuck in endless loop once crashes still commanding something..  easiest fix Dji could implement, not a fix, but its maybe helpful, is on crash the app just reloads instantly, usually reloading fixes the fly away.. i think iOS maybe immune to command loop crashing because on iOS once an app closes out completely, like via crashing.. it usually is completely removed from memory and cpu cycle time.. at least immune to this style of crashing..  best solution by far for DJi would be to rebuild the app so it doesn't fully crash, just a certain portion may have to reload..  this may obviously limit which andriod OS's they can support, but i mean come on...  most people are not going to be too bothered, specially since even cheap knock off phones come with marshmallow now..

I think it is a bit subjective to say "Android is very consistently broken"" and comparing to iOS. Please note that only iPhone and iPad use iOS, while there are many different hardware using Android. That is not to mention there are many customized Android such as Samsung Android, Xiaomi Android, Sony Android, Asus Android,..
I myself using pure Android on the Google Nexus phone and no crash, the performance is flawlessly.
So, maybe the customized Android on different brands make some unwanted behavior on the app and caused crashing.