So about a month ago i was flying in Monterey Bay, Ca. I was at my hotel and close to the water. I took my bird up and when i rotated it to look the other way so i could see the water, it disconnected. It did not land, it did not return to home location, which was only around the corner of the building, i walked with the drone in order to keep it in sight. I left my kids at the drones location to get the drone in case it decided to land. It would not reconnect and it did not respond to the return to home command. either from my phone or from the remote control. It eventually drifted towards the roof of the hotel. where i assumed it flew off because i did not see it land. After about a half hour passed i knew it had to be out of battery by then, i went to the front desk and asked if they woyuld let me on the roof in order for me to look for my drone. They said they would send an enginner up to look for it and i was very surprised as was the engineer to have found thst it landed on the edge of the roof by itself. The next day i was back home and flew a couple short flights around my house. Took the bird up and flew out towards town like normal but this time it did the same thing. 1700 ft out and it disconnected again. No return to home and no landing. I went to were it was last registered on GPS and could not find the drone. It showed that it was last notated right about a house. I could not see it on the roof and the owner of the house didnt see it in her yard. Sent a claim to DJI where they said since the drone disconnected they were unable to determine what happened after and then proceeded to offer a coupon for 30% off another mavic without the remote control and charger. Sent a email back to them stating my displeasure and the fact that of course they dont know what happened since it disconnected if we knew what happened then i would have found my lost bird. now they want more details about my points i made. Does anyone have any experience with this or how to respond or what they may be looking for in particular? Any help would be great, im just looking for a replacement mavic from a company that should stand behind something that happened and was not my fault. It was obviously a software or equiptment error. Not a 30% coupon to spend another 750 bucks with them.
Another question is if i have the serial number and all from the drone that i havent found yet, i know there is a way for DJI to track it even if it is off correct? I have tracked my drone before while driving and it is off and in the box in the trunk of my car and it still shows it on the map moving the same direction and path as my vehicle. So there must be an internal battery or something that it has inside where they would be able to look it up by the serial number and be able to tell me the gps coordinates of it. How can i go about doing that and maybe i could find my mavic that didnt come home.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Joe

Hi Joe!

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I do not have any good pointers.

I apologise in advance because I do not want the be rude but my curiosity gets the better of me so I have to ask.
How do you track you Mavic when it is switched off? You said you have done it yourself. And if you have tracked
it before could not not track it now after the fly-off in order to find it?

Hope your story ends well.

Best Regards
Georg

Im not sure if track is the right word. If you go into the app and click the 3 lines at the top it has an option of find my drone. I assumed it would just show the last recorded location when it was powered on but it showed a map and a marker where the drone was in my car and it was moving the same rate of speed and direction as my vehicle. I dont know if i was seeing things or not but i know it was shut off, but yet still tracking it

Sorry for your loss, could you please provide me with your case number so I can look into it?

I can imagine that the following happened at the hotel: The drone got disconnected (for whatever reason) and was configured to hover in place. That is what it did. At some point it noticed that the battery was low and returned to home. If you started very close to the roof of the hotel, this could be an explanation. Not knowing the configuration of your Mavic, this can be totally wrong.

The next day, the drone got disconnected again. With the configuration above, it would have hovered in place for some time before it decided to go back. If the way back was against the wind, it did not get back before it went out of battery. So, the drone might have stopped the flight back and started to land. If that is what happened,  you might find your drone in a direct line between your home point (where you started) and the point where the disconnect happened.

Some hints for the future:
1) Maintain a VLOS - visual line of sight.
2) Put your contact details on the drone.
3) Set all emergency option properly before you fly (set proper home point, behaviour return to home or hover in place, safety height, ...)

This 'tracking' thing sounds very odd.  Am I correct in guessing that you were viewing this apparent 'tracking' through the DJI app on your phone?  I suspect that what you were seeing was the GPS position of your own phone handset travelling in the car, not the Mavic aircraft!  If the Mavic is switched off and in the trunk of a car (shielded by substantial amounts of metal), I sincerely doubt that it would be able to communicate with much of anything, let alone be tracked.

Ok the tracking of the phone instead of the drone definitely makes sense, and I'll post my case number here shortly

CAS-896337-H4G2W2 That is my case number, I don't think it has closed yet as I never accepted the 30% offer and dji stated they would like to hear my points in more detail when I expressed my displeasure

Hopefully you can make something of it and possibly give me some sort of update on the situation

jkaufmann13 Posted at 2017-9-5 03:51
Hopefully you can make something of it and possibly give me some sort of update on the situation

We sympathize with your situation and my colleague has sent you email about your displeasure, please reply email to them directly, they will answer your query.

DJI Mindy Posted at 2017-9-5 20:33
We sympathize with your situation and my colleague has sent you email about your displeasure, please reply email to them directly, they will answer your query.

Hi - I had a very similar situation. My drone disconnected while being 500 metres away and 120 metres up in the air. As it was over water I could not access and recover the drone.

The offer I got was a 30% discount, with  DJI saying they can't acknolwledge it is a malfunction because the reason for the disconnect didn't get recorded in the flight file; to which I responded "what else can it be in 120m altitude than a malfunction?". Last response below suggests there is also a language problem with their comprehension and reply.

"Thanks for getting back to us.

If the incident happened due to any possible product malfunction, there is no doubt that we will cover it under our warranty. However for your case, there was no sign of abnormality or product malfunction found before the record ended. Yes, we also want to figure out that reason why this happened, however the cause was not recorded in the flight file. It is not the engineers are incapable or we are unwilling to. Thanks for your understanding. "

why??????? Posted at 2017-9-8 07:55
Hi - I had a very similar situation. My drone disconnected while being 500 metres away and 120 metres up in the air. As it was over water I could not access and recover the drone.

The offer I got was a 30% discount, with  DJI saying they can't acknolwledge it is a malfunction because the reason for the disconnect didn't get recorded in the flight file; to which I responded "what else can it be in 120m altitude than a malfunction?". Last response below suggests there is also a language problem with their comprehension and reply.

Could you please provide me with your case number so I can check more details about your case?

who's case number

Hello,
similar situation happened to me yesterday evening and my Mavic is gone now for more than 12 hours. From my flight record Or Find My Drone I am able to see only the position of the drone where it was 5 minutes before the battery died but then I lost the connection and couldnt say where it landed or which direction it was flying before it startér landing. The worse thing is it happened on the Lofoten Islands and I dont know if it landed on the water or on the land. If it was a land still I dont know where exactly and almost the only way to get there is by a boat. I can get there by walking around the island in couple of hours but without GPS coordinates the chance I would find it is pretty small. I also heard DJI can track the aircraft where it was alive in last moment of battery life. I really need some help here.
Thank you for any advice.
Jan Hubacek

jkaufmann13 Posted at 2017-9-9 20:58
who's case number

Thor replied users in 11# for case number.
Why don't you reply the email by my colleague? If you don't agree with the resolution, please reply the email directly and my colleague will follow up.

fans84d03b6c Posted at 2017-9-9 23:00
Hello,
similar situation happened to me yesterday evening and my Mavic is gone now for more than 12 hours. From my flight record Or Find My Drone I am able to see only the position of the drone where it was 5 minutes before the battery died but then I lost the connection and couldnt say where it landed or which direction it was flying before it startér landing. The worse thing is it happened on the Lofoten Islands and I dont know if it landed on the water or on the land. If it was a land still I dont know where exactly and almost the only way to get there is by a boat. I can get there by walking around the island in couple of hours but without GPS coordinates the chance I would find it is pretty small. I also heard DJI can track the aircraft where it was alive in last moment of battery life. I really need some help here.
Thank you for any advice.

We are sorry for the accident. Please check the flight record in APP to find the last coordinate when the drone lost.
If the drone cannot be found, please contact our support to start a ticket for data analysis, our engineers will try their best to find out the reason and provide further resolution.
Here is the link to obtain support: http://www.dji.com/support

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-9-8 17:42
Could you please provide me with your case number so I can check more details about your case?

Thank you!  My case number is

CAS-944885-F8D9L9 [CAS-944885-F8D9L9] CRM:0430000001846 [CAS-944885-F8D9L9] [CAS-944885-F8D9L9

why??????? Posted at 2017-9-12 03:28
Thank you!  My case number is

CAS-944885-F8D9L9 [CAS-944885-F8D9L9] CRM:0430000001846 [CAS-944885-F8D9L9] [CAS-944885-F8D9L9

You have our sincere apologize for this situation, since the flight records ended abruptly and the drone cannot be retrieved, we cannot find out the precise reason of the accident, and there is no sign of malfunction with the remaining flight record.
My colleague has explained to you the possible reason about the interruption, 30% off discount is the best offer we could provide, sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

Hi - thank you for your response.

I still think there is a flaw in your logic.

Since the drone disappeared in 120m altitude, was set to RTH and suddenly disconnected, AND then didn't return home - what else than a malfunction could it be?

There are a number of malfunctions that I can think of - battery failure, electronics failure - when you would not have a record. Yet you seem to insist that only if your record indicates a malfunction you will acknowledge that it is one.

Can you at least explain to me what if not a malfunction this could be?

why??????? Posted at 2017-9-13 22:38
Hi - thank you for your response.

I still think there is a flaw in your logic.

My colleague has explained the possibilities that may lead to the interruption of the flight record. For example, if there was obstacles or interference, disconnection may happen; the record also will be interrupted if the USB cable between your mobile device and the remote control looses, if the GPS was weak or unavailable, the aircraft may fail to return to home or the drone crashed into obstacles or blew by wind and so on.
I understand your opinion about the RTH failure and disconnection, but the thing is the record was interrupted, we do cannot find out the precise reason with the remaining flight records. Really sorry for this situation.

DJI Mindy Posted at 2017-9-13 23:06
My colleague has explained the possibilities that may lead to the interruption of the flight record. For example, if there was obstacles or interference, disconnection may happen; the record also will be interrupted if the USB cable between your mobile device and the remote control looses, if the GPS was weak or unavailable, the aircraft may fail to return to home or the drone crashed into obstacles or blew by wind and so on.
I understand your opinion about the RTH failure and disconnection, but the thing is the record was interrupted, we do cannot find out the precise reason with the remaining flight records. Really sorry for this situation.

So you seem to agree that there was nothing I did wrong.

Since it was a brand new drone under warranty I think you should therefore cover the loss. If in doubt (which you are because you don't know what happened) you should be supportive of your customers which pay a lot of money for these drones.

why??????? Posted at 2017-9-22 04:58
So you seem to agree that there was nothing I did wrong.

Since it was a brand new drone under warranty I think you should therefore cover the loss. If in doubt (which you are because you don't know what happened) you should be supportive of your customers which pay a lot of money for these drones.

I think you misunderstood what I said. My post in 20# are just some conjectures, and weak GPS signal, loose cable, obstacles don't mean there are malfunction with our drone. The thing is the records got cut off, no one knows what happened afterwards, we really appreciate your support to DJI and we understand you spent a lot money on it, but 30% off discount is the best offer we could provide for this situation, thanks for your understanding.