Greetings fellow pilots!
Well, the inevitable finally happened. Much like many other post i have read in this forum my Anafi simply fell from the sky. I have two DJI drones, two Yuneec drones and one Parrot Anafi. Of my many flights and two crashes, only one crash was due to the drone itself and not pilot error. This crash was not due to pilot error. As many of you have read this forum, I have had concerns about the many malfunctions I have encountered with this drone. I complained to Parrot support about this shortly after purchasing the drone in June of last year. My first complaints were about the hard landings I encountered shortly after purchase. These concerns fell on deaf ears and support continually closed my cases without resolution. These landings led to other malfunctions. I was unable to use the camera calibration feature effectively. During startups my camera would violently slap around rather than calibrate. Descending towards landings was wobbly and unstable. However, these complaints continued to be disregarded by support.
Today my flight started with a required firmware update in the field. I have complained about this requirement on this forum previously. Once the update was complete, I restarted the drone and started my flight. I was photographing a large construction site which brought the drone close to 800 yards away from my position. After completing the session, I returned to my launch area with 82% battery on the control and 52% on the drone. In the past I have found that descents are smoother if I keep forward motion on the drone so I was making a large circle as I began my descent. The drone was at about 200ft altitude and at a distance of about 50ft, wind speed was around 2 mph. Then suddenly without warning the drone seemed to completely lose power and fall. It appeared to make about three slow inversions on the way down. It landed in an open field of tall grass. I could hear it beeping as I approached it. Upon recovery I discovered the right front boom was snapped in two.
Despite all of my best efforts to avoid this scenario I now have a nearly $1000 investment sitting in a box unable to perform the duties for which it was purchased. I blame Parrot support for this failure. Had they listened to my concerns this predictable failure may have been avoided. I will be contacting support tomorrow and will post their response. Based on my passed experiences I'm not optimistic.