Well, new to the forum, but have been lurking a while.  I have 2 Sparks, one for myself, one for my son.  I bought them so we could enjoy flying together... and as with my other hobbies, get pretty immersed into it.  Having 2 makes me twice as worried about having a fly-away any day now.  We've not gotten many hours as I just gave my son his for his birthday earlier this week (but has flown mine with me a few times over the past month).  I've read many a post about fly-aways and want to do all I can to try and keep it from happening to either of us.  I've even read that some users have had more than 1 fly away.... seriously?

I think a collection point of as much data as possible could be helpful for each AC at the time of loss:

DJI Go or DJI Go 4
Android or IOS
Flying via phone /.tablet only, RC Only, or RC & tablet/phone combination
AC firmware version
RC Firmware version
DJI Go or Go 4 version

At this point, I'm not afraid to backtrack on firmware versions to try and head off a fly-away - but I'm not really sure what version to step back to.  I do know that on my Android Pixel 2, the lower left hand radar North was off by over 30 degrees due to the RC throwing the compass on my phone way off when I would put the phone in the RC's holder.  I've recently started doing a phone compass re-cal every time before a flight after coupling the two.  Oddly my son's RC has zero affect on his IPhone 6s when he puts it in the holder.

I was all excited to do this together with him - but for that to happen, we'll need to keep both birds, not one or even both birds lost due to a fly-away.  At this point, I"m almost scared to fly - lots of money in the air to lose.

Thanks for your help ahead of time.

Hi White Ox, thank you for reaching DJI Forum. We do feel glad for your son's birthday present. For more information about your DJI Spark. Kindly take the time to watch our official YouTube channel. I hope all is well with your son's birthday. Have a safe flight always.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL65kukZorPdNtSV_PMn1Ay4772cZMexXq

Hi White Ox,

Like you, I was first very concerned about 'fly-aways' (and I am still concerned) I also read most of the postings about this issue and after some time of reflection, I came to the conclusion that the majority of the fly-aways are caused by a combination of  pilot errors (like losing visual contact, flying behind buildings, etc.) and then not able to fly the AC in ATTI mode. Without GPS tracking the AC is carried away by the wind and indeed, fly-away. A good practice is to be able to fly the spark in ATTI mode, unfortunately, this is not available to be set manually.
With time one gets more confident of the limits of this great AC.
Happy flying with your son.
S.

Check compass and wifi signal and imu plus seeing home point on map with enough Sattis and don't worry

And I tip us uav forecast app to see wind speed and helpful info

On the up side, Sparks are getting cheaper and so are first gen Mavic Pro's.

A drone with a good signal to the remote controller, that then loses GPS and goes into ATTI mode, is still in full control of the pilot.  It just can't hover on its own since it has no way of correcting itself.  The pilot has to be on the sticks.  If he can't fly it very well, it might be better to land it where it is and go get it.  Don't fly over water if you can't control it in ATTI mode.

A drone in ATTI mode that loses signal to the remote controller will land where it is.  DJI designed it this way so there aren't drones are flying on their own across the nation's airspace.  It won't be a hovering landing when it lands because of no GPS so,...it will be drifting off during the entire automatic decent to ground.  Don't fly over water.

Don't fly by radio control what you can't afford to lose/crash.  DJI mitigates this with their DJI Care Refresh program.  Since you need to turn in the damaged drone, don't fly over water (hard to recover the Spark).