Hello everyone. I’m in a bit of a dire situation. My almost brand new AIR2S (only 2 months owned) took off on July 15 climbed to about 200 feet in altitude, and then horizontally travelled about 300 feet. i was enjoying the view kinda just looking around like I’d imagine a bird with a human brain would (lol) and then all of a sudden my AIR2S just freaked the fuck out!! it started spiralling down. I managed to get control of it for about 1 second it felt like (and the video footage seems to show that too) but then i lost it almost as quickly as i got it. Being the good licensed pilot I am my real pilot training kicked in and I thought Primer Locked, Carb heat on, mixture rich… wait… Wrong Aircraft. SECURE ENGINE!! (lol) And so I pulled my thumbsticks inward to do an emergency engine shutoff and i honestly dont know if the props shut off cuz it all happened so quick… next thing i know i see thru the camera my beautiful drone spiralling thru a pine tree and then smashing into the ground.
I have been unable to find it too despite all attempts using the find features. I did notice some odd behaviour which is concerning… When the drone crashes or goes missing using litchi you cannot use the Fly App to find it. And there is no option to make the drone beep and light up like the Fly App has. That feature is tremendously helpful and im convinced i could have found the drone if that feature worked in the Litchi App.
Does anyone know if im missing something to make that work in Litchi or is it just not available? If not available how would i go about submitting that suggestion and I’m curious how many people here would back me up on requesting that feature??
So that’s where my problems began with DJI. I can’t remember who i contacted within Litchi but the gist i got was that DJI was too busy to care if I was using the Fly app or a 3rd party app. I contacted DJI as I wasn’t going to risk voiding the warrant of my $2000 drone with 2 year refresh if i admitted to using a 3rd party app. I swear their online support guys are all nincompoops. The person i was chatting with didn’t seem to know anything and had to check on everything. I remember thinking and laughing at the idea at some point during my long wait to get an answer, that i bet if i asked this person what their. name is, where they live and if they were a human or a robot they would tell me to kindy hold on a moment while they discuss these questions with their colleagues and check the DJI knowledge base for an answer.
I made sure to ask the question if it using a 3rd party app like Litchi would void the manufacturers and/or extended Refresh Care warranties. The person eventually came back quoting something saying that only the official DJI Fly app is supported under warranty. That scared the shit out of me so i asked again, are you positive that if i use the Litchi App, which you guys appear to have some ties with as they are a software developer partner of some sort with DJI, will a supported partner’s app void my warranty?
I pointed out that the Litchi App use the DJI API’s so don’t understand why it would be any different to DJI if I was using the Litchi app or the Fly app cuz under the hood it’s all the same API calls being made to the drone.
The agent. asked me to kindly hold the line while they confirmed. And again, they said it would not be supported.
So i created my flyaway incident with all the information i could. I showed them the video of the crash. But they kept asking for the FlightRecords folder within the DJI Fly App on my IOS device, Which i sent them but it did not have any flight record data for July15 which is when the drone crashed. The last bit of data they had was July 10 which was when i used it briefly to learn more about Mastershots, etc. In the DJI Fly App there is no record whatsoever that i flew the drone that day. I did notice though that the subfolder MCDatFlightRecords had its modified time updated to July 15 @ 1305 which was roughly a few minutes after the drone crashed. Plus i had the video footage that was auto synced from Litchi to my ipad’s photo library.
They kept asking for the flight records and I kept telling them I didn’t have anything and perhaps it was a glitch in their software. Then i realized it wasn’t and that when i use Litchii it doesn’t sync the flight logs with the Fly app or my DJI Account. This is a major oversight if I understand this correctly.
So after a lot of frustrating back and forth, and insisting that they use some common sense and look at the video footage i have, look at the updated folder time and trust me that i flew that flight and it just went out of control for no reason that they would have to conclude what i did… that there was some kind of major manufacturers glitch and as such it should be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty and replaced for free without using up my 1 flyaway a year.
This went on for almost 2 weeks, then last night in the middle of the night I sent one more follow-up email asking to speak with a manager because I was so upset and disappointed with their customer support and I get a really sarcastic email from someone at DJI basically saying, and I quote “Sorry for your loss. Since you cannot provide a flight record log to our engineering time we cannot cover this and it will be $880USD to buy a new drone”. I flipped out and told them that there is no way in hell that I am accepting “Sorry for your loss”. I told him that I thought the issue here was whether or not the replacement would be free since it was an mfg defect, or if I would have to pay the small flyaway fee if it was a pilot error. I am 100% confident it was not a pilot error.
Guys, I don’t know what to do from here!! I did just think of something I should have done initially which was checking the Litchi App too, in order to see if there was a Flight Record folder. And to my pleasant surprise, there was and it was loaded with a ton of excel files (might be CSV files). I scrolled to the bottom of the list and what do u know… there’s a log file from the date and time of the crash!
I thought to myself "yay! I’m saved! I got the data file I need to prove them of no wrongdoing on my part until I realised that the files were unencrypted files that opened up in excel. My glimmer of hope faded away upon the realization that this means I cannot send these in as they are not DJI’s logs, they are Litchi’s logs and according to DJI since Litchi is a 3rd party app, my drone will not be covered under any kind of warranty… Or will it?
TL;DR My drone went haywire shortly after taking off. DJI is refusing to send me a new one despite having video evidence that the drone just dropped out of the sky. They want the Flight Record file of the flight when the drone literally fell out of the sky. But because I’m using litchi which is a 3rd party app, there is no Flight Record log file in the FlighteRecords folder in the DJI Fly App. There is a flight record file of the flight that crashed in the Litchi App’s flight log folder though. Can I submit this litchi log file to them and admit that I was using litchi to get them to honour my warranty?
Does anyone know of a way to sync my litchi app’s flight records with DJI’s flight records on their server? Or if there is a way to convert Litchi’s flight logs into a DJI Fly format so that they would not know the difference that I used Litchi instead of DJI Fly?
Asked differently, and a lot more simply… has anyone here had their drone flyaway while using Litchi and successfully gotten it replaced using the refresh or manufacturer’s warranty? And if so did you have any issues because you were using Litchi? Or were they totally cool with it and the Litchi flight record was totally acceptable to them?
Sorry for the long frantic post. I’m just so upset right now and terrified that I will never get this drone replaced. I cannot afford to buy another one anytime soon, nor do I feel like I should have to as this was an mfg defect.
Any helpful advice is greatly appreciated.
Stay safe yall. Cheers. Pilot Ryan
