Some newbie questions here, hope you guys can help me out as I only had the Air for a week:
1. I took off from the 15th floor of a building and flew out, after which it started descending to the carpark and did not respond to the RC when I tried to bring it back up again. Is this because of the Max altitude setting? In emergency situations, how do I override all settings and make it listen to the RC?

2. When flying out to the sea, can it "detect" the sea and not stupidly land on the waters?

3. When in Asteroid/Boomerang mode, I noticed it takes a HUGE radius around the POI. Is obstacle avoidance TRUSTED enough to spin around me when there are many high rise buildings around it?

3b. What if I activate Asteroid mode in a small ROOM? How will the Mavic Air react?

4. In SPORT mode, when dashing forward, the camera just dangles downwards (when it was in upright position). Is it possible to LOCK the camera position while it dashes forward?

5. Will the app inform me when the RC is going to lose its signal soon? Will there be a situation that I fly too far out and the RC loses signal and I am unable to get my drone to come back? What should I do in such a situation?

6. I searched high and low for 3rd party batteries and was surprised to find NONE. Can anyone advise where I can find them? Also, I understand some powerbanks can directly charge the Mavic Air, but not all. What are the EXACT specifications to look out for? Just V and A?

1.  best if you can submit your logs and post them here for us to view for why this is....1st of all people will say use the pause button, i normally agree, but if its a wireless connection issue specially with wifi errors/packet loss pause button may not do much for you.   but no max alt wont cause your mavic air to decent randomly or disobey orders just limits how high you can fly and wont let you fly higher.  however considering said this was on 15th floor of a building i imagine you were in city/built up area maybe result of poor wireless connection causing issues.  i had this happen to me a few times mavic air will just disobey you or keeps replaying last input you gave it for alarming amount of time.     the other possibility is in a NFZ and only realized this after you took off..


2. in theory landing protection will help aid you from landing into water or other less than optimal surfaces, inpractice its super hit/miss.. so to avoid landing in water dont fly too close to surface of water.  

3. obstical aviodance is limited to back and front and bottom of the drone.  has effectively ability to see something next to it, huge blind spot so no..but kind of... depends what part of the routine it is in.

3b. if the room is large enough to even activate this mode  in the first place, then it will probably stop itself if it can see the wall behind it.. or just crash into the ceiling and then fall.  

4. yes and no.. .. the issue is the drone is reaching an angle that gimbal cannot correct for completely when using sport mode..  i believe maybe a way to edit a parameter to correct this but would limit the sportiness of the drone.   dji could and should give us a gimbal priority toggle in sport mode... so drone  doesn't take off at an angle deeper than the gimbal can manage.  but again dont count on it..

5. yes, and likely encounter this alot telling you weak signal...  and by default the action it will take is to return home on signal loss.. but it is important to wait for a proper GPS lock first and it to mark a accurate home point on the map before flying away..

6. i wouldn't run the risk of a 3rd party battery in a drone worth so much money flying 100s of feet in the sky.  there is a reason these batteries are expensive, its because they are genuinely intelligent and tightly tuned.  they know temperature of each cell, power level of each cell, track mah of each cell and whole pack,  have balance circuitry and alot of smarter protections in place and specially doped chemically to handle higher voltages and current drains and to be flexible in operation so have higher voltages and deeper discharge than most LiHV batteries... so probably a good reason no 3rd party batteries short of DJi probably not allowing it. safety and quality

“I took off from the 15th floor of a building”
This is not likely to ever end well.

So... Let me see if I can answer these.

1. No, however if you were in an altitude restricted area this might happen, although I cant be certain as I am not sure if there is a barometer to determine altitude or if the drone " guesses"
2. Probably no. the unfortunate thing about the M2Z is that it too has this issue which made for silly shenanigans as I had to essentially micro manage every movement and more with the aircraft no recognizing the "ground" Best tip is to always be in visual LOS so you can physically keep an eye on it as I was a little further out than expected and found that the tiny speck of my aircraft was about 5 feet off the wave tops even though it was reading 20 feet altitude. Water is scary yo, although supposedly calm water with no sun works fine...? If someone will correct me on this I would appreciate it as this is something I have heard but never tried. For obvious reasons.
3. Its probably not going to see everything. Given the limited OA sensors, it can effectively see an arc behind and in front, but even then that wont stop it from sideswiping a building, person or object. I dont even trust the mavic 2s systems to avoid crashes as I had an issue where it almost ran butt first into a tree because I was a few degrees off with my previous calculation. (basically, two trees with a focal point for a dolly zoom, almost ran into a 50 foot fir tree on its rear left side.)
3b. Do not actually do this. If you are in atti I dont believe you can access this option (someone correct me if wrong), but even then your drone gonna die if you do this. Do not. no. nope.
4. not really, the aircraft has to compensate to reach top speeds meaning even though you might have the additonal up 30 degree option turned on more than likely its still gonna bounce.
5. YES. This is the best thing about the app/aircraft is that most of the time in city it will complain FREQUENTLY about this. it is mildly obnoxious but is extremely helpful. as far as LOSS (loss of signal situation), it depends. NORMALLY, it should intiate RTH however there is also the option where you can tell it to land when LOSS occurs. If you absoulutly lose signal, which chances are if you are in a area with wifi and you go over 1000 feet, Do not panic, my general rules for situations like this is to try and relocate the aircraft visually as your screen is effectively useless unless loss of control occurs, however unlikely that is. After relocating it, which shouldnt be difficult as you should have the aircraft within VLOS at all times, determine if it is hovering or moving, and from there try to get closer or aim your antennas at the aircraft. If its landing then best get running cause you probably wanna grab it before it lands somewhere less than ideal. While doing whatever you are doing based on the situation, be aware of your surrondings and also press the remotes RTH as this is also a reliable way of getting the aircraft closer to you when you regain signal. In general you shouldnt have these issues but its always important to understand and "train" as much as possible for these situations.
6. No and No. As far as I understand it, there are no 3rd party batteries for the MA. As far as powerbanks, you cannot directly charge via the usb c in the rear of the aircraft, this is a feature I wish they included from the spark but i degress. There are options for powerbanks to charge your batteries seperate from the aircraft, although I cannot recommend any as I never needed or used any before.

PS, try not flying off of balconies or windows of buildings, Its possible but not recommended. I personally dont do it.

Years ago I flew off a balcony, gps had good sats figured no problem. I even hand released not to hit anything. As soon as I got airborne , it went really squeerly . Luckily I was experienced .it was difficult to regain control but luckily I did . I had to get out away from building for this to happen. I have flown from ground take off and rose up an flew all around after . Don’t take off from balcony. Luckily water was out over balcony. If it was another building, surely I would have crashed. As far as water, just make sure all your sensors are off and you should be ok. But be careful! Happy safe flying !