DUAS 0040

Go back

1st June 2026

Single Column View

I forgot my Drone was in the Sky

Initial Report

I was flying my drone one night and forgot it was in the sky, so I turned off the controller. It crash landed into a parked car.

If anyone wants to know what happens when you switch off the controller and walk away from your drone, read on.

Did some fireworks last night and set the drone up to record the boxes I bought, so two deployments so to speak along with audio. First one went fine, I hovered it to the side of the house on record and switched off my audio, brought the drone back afterwards. Launched it to the same place for the second video, did both the box and our final firework. Turned off the audio and the controller and started chatting to my neighbour as I was putting some bits away. Whilst chatting to him I noticed what looked like someone else’s drone near to where mine had been, although this had a load of white lights in it and was coming downwards. I remember thinking how lucky it had been that it wasn’t there earlier, as we had both been flying in the same place!

As I was walking back in the house I suddenly thought where is the drone? Then it dawned on me, I had totally forgotten about it. Around 15 mins had passed since turning off my controller. Can’t believe I did it, but I am not using it really any more so not in the habit of thinking about it.

I used the bleep and flash to find it in the road outside, half on the kerb having what looks like clipped a car on the way down. I thought it would RTH, but it didn’t. Quick inspection and test, not a mark on it and flew like new.

I presume the white lights were my drone?

CHIRP Comment

The Board had the following comments:

We are particularly grateful for this very open and honest report.
It is important to recognise the limit of your capacity when flying a Drone. There is a point at which it becomes very difficult for anyone to remember all aspects of the multiple tasks they are trying to undertake simultaneously. Know your limits!
We do not recommend lighting fireworks and flying a Drone at the same time. Keeping eyes on the Drone in the dark is a task in itself that needs concentration and maintaining Visual Line of Sight is a legal requirement.
Whatever the size and weight of your Drone, it is important to stay current and not fall out of practice. Distraction from your surroundings is a constant threat. When mixed with a lack of currency on the aircraft, the consequences will multiply.
Creating a marked off safe space for both take-off and landing of the Drone is essential. This might also have reminded the pilot that they had launched one in the first place.
Turning off the controller should have resulted in RTH (Return to Home) being triggered. However, perhaps the reason it didn’t do this was because the reaction to the trigger event was set to hover. After hovering until it started to run out of battery and with the controller switched off, it may well have just done an autoland in situ, rather than an RTH.
Turning the audible warnings off on any Drone Flight is increasing the chance of Human Factor errors creeping in.
When flying a Drone, it is not advisable to be doing any other task, whether it is setting off fireworks or something else.