ASRS 2286952
ACN 2286952 · 2025-09 · DJI Mavic 3
Government UAS pilot reported a loss of control of the UAS in-flight resulting in the UAS descending into a tree and crashing into the ground.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim, de-identified by NASA. Placeholders: ZZZ,
X, Y.
Deployed drone to assist patrol with searching for missing / runaway juvenile that had been gone about 3 hours, however was not able to locate the juvenile. Near the end of this flight record, I had maneuvered the drone into a position to evaluate a spot under a tree (in thermal) and shortly after doing this the drone started to lose altitude (uncontrolled descent), which I tried to correct with giving stick controls to elevate in altitude and / or move side to side, however none of the inputs corrected the issue. The drone eventually fell (with motors still going) from about 130 feet to the ground, striking a tree on the way down and causing damage to the aircraft (broken antenna and cracked body), resulting in the drone being inoperable and going to need repairs.
Analyst callback
Paraphrased notes from ASRS analyst follow-up calls with the reporter.
Reporter stated the UAS exhibited delayed responses to inputs once before, but this was the first time all control was lost. The reporter was unsure of what could have caused the event.
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 voluntary, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective; they are not investigated and cannot be used to infer prevalence. Authoritative source: asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗