Final Update:
It appears my case is coming to an end, the drone is being shipped back to me along with a replacement battery which should arrive in a few days. I have requested for an analysis of the data as to why it crashed but have not yet received one. Originally DJI wanted to have me use my refresh insurance but after I disagreed (because I believed the crash to not be pilot error) my case was escalated. After a few days it was determined that my drone would be covered under warranty. Although this process has been lengthy, DJI did correctly handle my case and I am satisfied with the result.

Timeline:
Drone Crash July/03/2017
Case Accepted    Jul/04/2017 12:49:26
Received   Jul/12/2017 18:25:29
Damage Assessed   Jul/19/2017 10:05:05
Free Of Charge   Jul/19/2017 10:05:37  
Repaired   Jul/25/2017 10:13:35
Product shipped   Jul/25/2017 18:52:03

Hopefully DJI handles everyone's cases in the same way, but it appears they are only honoring warranty if your drone was recovered like mine. For now my spark will not be flown out of sight or above water until DJI confirms a fix to this issue.

Happy flying,

Patrick

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-7-26 00:08
It doesn't need to record anything after power cut or crash, in your dat file it should record what made the spark suddenly lose power, so as you can see from others who have sent in their spark, they have been offered warranty, and hopefully you will to. Problem is still they won't tell those who have got warranty why this power cut happened.

They have all the data they need to tell us why this is happening, but the silence is deafening.

Thank you! Looks like they received my Spark today and I hope to hear good news from them soon.

Google dji spark falling out of the sky!   The verge.com did an article that reported about dji sparks cutting power and falling to the ground.

I will say though DJI has done a good job by me so far. I posted on this forum about my spark cutting power mid flight and falling to the ground. Dji is going to warranty my spark and cover the damages. I was very satisfied with the outcome even though I was upset that I had my spark for only 1 week when this happened. I hope some of y'all get the same outcome guys.

Patrick C Posted at 2017-7-27 08:16
Final Update:
It appears my case is coming to an end, the drone is being shipped back to me along with a replacement battery which should arrive in a few days. I have requested for an analysis of the data as to why it crashed but have not yet received one. Originally DJI wanted to have me use my refresh insurance but after I disagreed (because I believed the crash to not be pilot error) my case was escalated. After a few days it was determined that my drone would be covered under warranty. Although this process has been lengthy, DJI did correctly handle my case and I am satisfied with the result.

That's good, I'm glad it worked out for you. I just received their email back saying the following:

"Dear Customer, Unfortunately, damage that is not caused by a product malfunction or is out of the warranty period is not covered by DJI aftersales policy. We will either repair it or replace it with a product that's new or equivalent to new in both performance and reliability after payment has been received. For more information, please visit http://www.dji.com/service/policy DJI North America"

I'm going to call them tomorrow morning and disagree with the return they gave as well.

My spark didn't come back 2/7/17 it disconnected and I couldn't fly it back or use RTH of course they said it was my falt not there's 30% off. Can't use my care Refresh. Video on YouTube ( DJI Spark and DJI care Refresh ) they don't care about their customers. Shame on DJI

Before the flight, I did the calibration and wait until it get 8 GPS signal. After 59 second and while moving forward, Spark suddenly shut down at Battery 87% and then the screen show "Signal lost" at 53m height and 34m distance away from me. Please noted I fly this flight with remote control. No warning messages showing up on screen for this flight.

Before the flight, I did the calibration and wait until it get 8 GPS signal. After 59 second and while moving forward, Spark suddenly shut down at Battery 87% and then the screen show "Signal lost" at 53m height and 34m distance away from me. Please noted I fly this flight with remote control. No warning messages showing up on screen for this flight.

I submit my case to DJI Support and it is now 2 weeks without any feedback.

DoraeMonZ Posted at 2017-7-28 04:39
Before the flight, I did the calibration and wait until it get 8 GPS signal. After 59 second and while moving forward, Spark suddenly shut down at Battery 87% and then the screen show "Signal lost" at 53m height and 34m distance away from me. Please noted I fly this flight with remote control. No warning messages showing up on screen for this flight.

I submit my case to DJI Support and it is now 2 weeks without any feedback.

If you lose signal spark should return home or land , if it was only 30 metres away how come you can't find it.

fansab7d98f9 Posted at 2017-7-27 17:30
My spark didn't come back 2/7/17 it disconnected and I couldn't fly it back or use RTH of course they said it was my falt not there's 30% off. Can't use my care Refresh. Video on YouTube ( DJI Spark and DJI care Refresh ) they don't care about their customers. Shame on DJI

If you lost signal your spark should RTH or land you don't need to press RTH , if you lost gps then that's another matter.
Can you post your flight log...

igorgaelzer Posted at 2017-7-27 17:02
That's good, I'm glad it worked out for you. I just received their email back saying the following:

"Dear Customer, Unfortunately, damage that is not caused by a product malfunction or is out of the warranty period is not covered by DJI aftersales policy. We will either repair it or replace it with a product that's new or equivalent to new in both performance and reliability after payment has been received. For more information, please visit http://www.dji.com/service/policy DJI North America"

If they said it's not a malfunction then they must know what happened, so you need to ask them for a full report on what happened.
This is not a case of , it wasn't your fault or it wasn't dji fault, they said AC didn't malfunction so they must know what happened.

Good luck.

DoraeMonZ Posted at 2017-7-28 04:39
Before the flight, I did the calibration and wait until it get 8 GPS signal. After 59 second and while moving forward, Spark suddenly shut down at Battery 87% and then the screen show "Signal lost" at 53m height and 34m distance away from me. Please noted I fly this flight with remote control. No warning messages showing up on screen for this flight.

I submit my case to DJI Support and it is now 2 weeks without any feedback.

I think I'm going to let my sparks auto-land at a new owners house. Long live the mavic!!!

BriRi Posted at 2017-7-26 18:01
Sorry for your loss. Upload the flight log and post link here if you don't mind. A group of us have been looking at them trying to figure out what is happening.

How do i upload?

I've been following this tread for a while and I still don't get how if the Spark literally "falls from the sky" can be pilot error.  Of course if the battery is drained that would cause it to fall.  I've been flying DJI products for years, thus I'm not quite a noob.

I feel like I have spent too much effort for this fall out stuff already.DJI has also finally release a firmware.If it fix the fall out cases,then it is good.if the falling keeps going,means that Spark is a failure and cannot be fixed.So,if my Spark falls,that will be my first and last product with DJI

wonder if its safe to fly the SPARK in Canada this weekend.

this is my first drone as well and id hate to have it messed up.  I bought DJI REFRESH just to be on the safe side but from what ive read DJI seems not to be honoring FALLING FROM THE SKY issue(?)

Latest reply from DJI, they still refuse to replace the drone that went falling into the ocean. I had well over 70% of battery life left. I calibrated the GPS prior to taking off. The controller itself was fully charged, the drone was up to date. Weather itself was clear, cool, and little to no wind. The drone did not exhibit any signs of issue. I had been flying it the previous day in the park. Mind you this is not my first drone, I had a 3dr Solo and parrot drone. According to their flight records, it somehow just stopped recording at 191ft in the air. It either landed on a cloud or I flew up like superman over the ocean and grabbed it.

DJI wants owners of lost drones to throw more money at them, even though they have yet to solve or admit to this issue. These articles suggest its a small amount of drones, but this thread is full of crashed drones, not including the other places people have reported their drones crashing. Their analysis will of course be incomplete if power suddenly cuts out and no recording can be made. They have had plenty of drones sent back to them with "inconclusive results" in which they are repairing for free, but give no explanation to why the drones fell from the sky. Are they holding out until one of these drones lands on someones head or property prior to saying that this drone has an issue? This is a lesson they should learn from GoPro, recall the drone or ground the drone until they figure out the issue.

Thanks for getting back to us.

I had our analysts recheck your flight record, however the result was the same. with the record ended suddenly, we do couldn't figure out what happened afterwards and the cause of the incident as there was no any sign of product malfunction found.

We are not force you to purchase our product. You can accept the offer if you would like to purchase another aircraft, this is the solution based on the analysis result. If you do not want to purchase an aircraft, you surly can refuse it. According to our warranty policy, if the incident happened caused by any product malfunction, we should provide our customers the free warranty service within the warranty period. And when it comes to the case which the cause is inconclusive, we could provide our customer with the 30% off discount instead.

We have to stress again, if the cause of the incident was product malfunction, or as you claimed that "something was wrong with the aircraft", we do will provide our customer with corresponding service. But for your case, it can not be verified from the record.

By the way, the 30% off discount is valid for a month.

Thanks for your support to us. Have a nice day.


Best Regards,

Evelyn
DJI Tech Support
http://www.dji.com/

To all of you that submit your case to DJI and are waiting for the results just beware 99% of the time DJI is not at fault they will say it's pilot error tell you how sorry they are and maybe tell you you can have 30% a new one. Why they offer DJI Care Refresh is only to make more money off us not to many people can use it. It is obvious DJI Customer Care doesn't care about the customers that much.

UPS says my spark arrived at DJI today.  Site says two days till they open it, then they will "evaluate" the craft.  I will keep this thread updated.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-7-28 05:38
If you lose signal spark should return home or land , if it was only 30 metres away how come you can't find it.

As I mention, my Spark simply turned off and fell out of the sky at 87% battery. I cannot find it because it fall into the river. The app said signal lost and it cannot rth as it did not have the power.

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2017-7-28 06:35
I think I'm going to let my sparks auto-land at a new owners house. Long live the mavic!!!

it is not able to land as it simply turned off and fell down.

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2017-7-28 06:35
I think I'm going to let my sparks auto-land at a new owners house. Long live the mavic!!!

The Mavic are having EXACT the same problems as Spark, compass problems, sudden loss of signal or gps (out of controll), fell of the sky problems..

DoraeMonZ Posted at 2017-7-28 20:47
As I mention, my Spark simply turned off and fell out of the sky at 87% battery. I cannot find it because it fall into the river. The app said signal lost and it cannot rth as it did not have the power.

Didn't realise it fell into water.

Hathdert Posted at 2017-7-29 01:34
The Mavic are having EXACT the same problems as Spark, compass problems, sudden loss of signal or gps (out of controll), fell of the sky problems..

Usually compass is the responsibility of pilot, there are ways to check your compass is ok before you fly, there are also warnings, most of the compass problems are caused by picking up interference on the ground, not checking before you fly that your compass is good.

So most of what you have seen over at Mavic and here are not a fault of the aircraft, but rather flying in the wrong environment and being badly prepared to fly.


https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... &fromuid=260008

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-7-29 05:33
Usually compass is the responsibility of pilot, there are ways to check your compass is ok before you fly, there are also warnings, most of the compass problems are caused by picking up interference on the ground, not checking before you fly that your compass is good.

So most of what you have seen over at Mavic and here are not a fault of the aircraft, but rather flying in the wrong environment and being badly prepared to fly.

I really agree.

I also agree.  

For those who shipped in their sparks, how long between when the spark was signed for by DJI to when the ticket updated to say they had it?  UPS says they signed for mine Friday at 10:40am, but they case still lists it as "waiting to receive".  I know it takes a few days to unbox after receiving, but shouldn't the database update to show they have it?

My Spark also fell out of the sky two and half weeks ago, still waiting on a response from DJI. Will be very disappointed if they don't offer a replacement.

It was only 50m out but over the ocean and unrecoverable. Had been amazing for the 30+ flights beforehand.

Onomarn Posted at 2017-7-28 08:26
Latest reply from DJI, they still refuse to replace the drone that went falling into the ocean. I had well over 70% of battery life left. I calibrated the GPS prior to taking off. The controller itself was fully charged, the drone was up to date. Weather itself was clear, cool, and little to no wind. The drone did not exhibit any signs of issue. I had been flying it the previous day in the park. Mind you this is not my first drone, I had a 3dr Solo and parrot drone. According to their flight records, it somehow just stopped recording at 191ft in the air. It either landed on a cloud or I flew up like superman over the ocean and grabbed it.

DJI wants owners of lost drones to throw more money at them, even though they have yet to solve or admit to this issue. These articles suggest its a small amount of drones, but this thread is full of crashed drones, not including the other places people have reported their drones crashing. Their analysis will of course be incomplete if power suddenly cuts out and no recording can be made. They have had plenty of drones sent back to them with "inconclusive results" in which they are repairing for free, but give no explanation to why the drones fell from the sky. Are they holding out until one of these drones lands on someones head or property prior to saying that this drone has an issue? This is a lesson they should learn from GoPro, recall the drone or ground the drone until they figure out the issue.

ya that is total BS...  DJi needs to take responsibility here.     i would understand it if these cases were way more isolated that Dji would want to say we can't prove it either way..so here.. but fact is.. sparks falling out of the sky are happening at an astounding rate!  FB page is littered, literally littered with this BS.. this official forum averages 1 per day... official forums will always been least popular place to vent.

at this point, even if it is user error.. there has to be a point when we say enough is enough, if it is that easy for a user to make such a fatal error that it risks not only there drone and money but also risks other people being hurt, that maybe DJi needs to take responsibility before gets even worse and completely focus 100% of resources into it.. either recalling/replacing or updating software/firmware to  better block idiot moves and to better log data.  because guess what.. this quadcopter is targeting a wide range of people.. including people that only understand "easy" .   

add on top of all of this that these logs belong to and are maintained by DJi, yet they are incomplete and they leave it on us.  ya..no sorry, that's not cool



at this point, i hope DJi gets slammed really hard by a class action suit, because at this stage it is now moving into territory of negligence.  no offical statements they publically made addressing the issue and what they plan on doing or are currently doing.. just some PR spokesman spoke to 1 site and said basically a snippet from back of a skymall advertisement about how DJi tests products. and admits to "isolated" cases

ImHereToCrash Posted at 2017-7-30 20:33
ya that is total BS...  DJi needs to take responsibility here.     i would understand it if these cases were way more isolated that Dji would want to say we can't prove it either way..so here.. but fact is.. sparks falling out of the sky are happening at an astounding rate!  FB page is littered, literally littered with this BS.. this official forum averages 1 per day... official forums will always been least popular place to vent.

at this point, even if it is user error.. there has to be a point when we say enough is enough, if it is that easy for a user to make such a fatal error that it risks not only there drone and money but also risks other people being hurt, that maybe DJi needs to take responsibility before gets even worse and completely focus 100% of resources into it.. either recalling/replacing or updating software/firmware to  better block idiot moves and to better log data.  because guess what.. this quadcopter is targeting a wide range of people.. including people that only understand "easy" .   

They don't care.... people still rushing to buy their product.

rickysuperdog Posted at 2017-7-30 20:53
They don't care.... people still rushing to buy their product.

i know.. we all know.. and its rather sad.   im actually hoping someone nails them really hard legally.  and they forced to fix it and offer affected people something worth their loss and time.

About all those falling Spark cases, it seems that most of time, they were just hovering (at least many people say so). Is this feeling right or were some of the machines moving when the shutdown occured ? Were they really hovering without stick or other means inputs or were they getting up or down ?

http://forum.dji.com/thread-105008-1-1.html
Chceck this out.
Its Mavic, but sounds similar.

Kyokushin Posted at 2017-7-30 21:32
http://forum.dji.com/thread-105008-1-1.html
Chceck this out.
Its Mavic, but sounds similar.

The Mavic still powered on after dropped on the box. But my case the Spark was totally powered off and then dropped on the floor, battery was still tightly installed and can be power on instantly.

It was just hovering on the air 6-7 feet and was just in front of me thats why I saw the process clearly.

rickysuperdog Posted at 2017-7-30 22:28
The Mavic still powered on after dropped on the box. But my case the Spark was totally powered off and then dropped on the floor, battery was still tightly installed and can be power on instantly.

It was just hovering on the air 6-7 feet and was just in front of me thats why I saw the process clearly.

My old notebook has a tight battery on it, but if i shake it too hard or drop it on my bed, it will shut down, so.. the notebook have a problem, even if its not easy to replicate.

Maybe spark when hit the ground and crash, battery slides a little, just a little, and turn off  on impact. To turn off the drone is just needed a second of no battery contact to the drone to turn off. Its not a hard thing to happen if the drone fall of the sky and crash to the ground.

Just following these threads - does anyone know if these have been any further 'falls from the air' after the latest firmware update.

STech - Hathder Posted at 2017-7-31 01:03
My old notebook has a tight battery on it, but if i shake it too hard or drop it on my bed, it will shut down, so.. the notebook have a problem, even if its not easy to replicate.

Maybe spark when hit the ground and crash, battery slides a little, just a little, and turn off  on impact. To turn off the drone is just needed a second of no battery contact to the drone to turn off. Its not a hard thing to happen if the drone fall of the sky and crash to the ground.

In that case, the drone would keep sending telemetry data while falling, which is not happening

dvockic Posted at 2017-7-31 03:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s7g_aSKxHs&t=2s

i found this on youtube, i´m scared to fly me spark ;(

dvockic Posted at 2017-7-31 03:50
i found this on youtube, i´m scared to fly me spark ;(

I wonder if he was on the latest firmware. If you see his DJI Go 4 homescreen at 3:15 of the clip, I believe it is the old version 4.1.3