NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Part 107 UAS pilot reported a fly away occurred during landing. The UAS pilot was unable to recover the drone.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
I was flying in a park across from a client's building in downtown Location X in 95-degree weather. I was bringing the drone back down to land it and leave for another location, and all of a sudden, it moved back, and the controller screen lost contact. The "return-to- home" function didn't work, and I couldn't regain contact with the drone. I phoned the Police Department to report it. The "find drone" function didn't work to locate it, and I'm not sure if it was a heat-related thing or a technical glitch or what made it move backwards. I have been using that drone for 5.5 years without incident.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Aircraft Equipment Problem
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Aircraft · Software and Automation
- Primary Problem
- Ambiguous
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.