Drone News: Pilot Institute Student Saves Lives using Drone, New DJI Mavic and DJI Air unit, FOIA shows 100 UAS accident reports to the FAA

This week in drone news: A story of a Pilot Institute Student who saved two people in 9 days using drones, DJI released the Mavic 3 Multispectral & the new O3+ Air Unit this week, and a FOIA Showed 101 accidents reported to the FAA.

Your first story this week is a Pilot Institute Student who saved a life.

Texas Game Warden Michael Hummert responded to two search and rescue calls in central Texas in less than ten days.

As the only thermal drone in the county, Hummert led deputies to the first missing individual who was in a restricted DOD airspace.

Just nine days later officials reached out requesting assistance in another missing persons case.

Hummert working in conjunction with federal officials was again successful in ensuring the person’s safety.

Huge shout out to Warden Hummert and all first responders! Thanks for what you do!

Your second story this week is the new DJI air unit and the Mavic 3 Multispectral!

O3+ has arrived in an air unit platform, and the video is amazing with 1080p 100fps in the goggles and 4K60 with rock steady recording in camera.

We’ve got a review you can check out here where we tested the air unit in a number of torture tests!

Also check out Drone XL’s article on the new air unit!

Also released this week is the Mavic 3 Multispectral, signaling the true end to the Phantom line up.

The M3M uses a 4/3 CMOS sensor with 4 additional sensors in the Green, Red, Red Edge, and Near IR bands to collect data for agriculture.

Each additional sensor is 5MP while the main sensor is 20MP with a mechanical shutter.

As with the rest of the Mavic 3 enterprise line up, the M3M has an available SDK, RTK, and uses the DJI Pilot 2 App.

For those who were waiting for a Phantom 5, it looks like this is it! This is the 6th Mavic 3 from DJI, and the 4th one this year.

Your third story this week is a FOIA request that showed 101 drone accident reports made to the FAA.

Interesting notes are that 25 of the 101 pertain to near misses or collisions with manned aircraft, 8 were caused by fly aways, 7 by wind, 4 by low battery, and 3 were shot down.

Many of the accidents were due to equipment malfunctions, however there are a few that are due to people being “That guy”.

One discussed a person flying a mavic air 2 by an unlicensed operator who decided to go inside during the flight, resulting in the drone low-battery landing into a girl riding her bike resulting in lacerations to her face that required hospitalization.

Remember that these were FAA reports, not NTSB reports. The NTSB reporting requirements are actually a lot lower than the FAA ones (which is only $500 in damage).

The last story this week is that our Black Friday sale is going strong today. All the courses in our catalog are currently at the lowest they will be this year, and I mean that. Our Part 107 course is $107 right now, our photo/video fundamentals course is $75, the real estate course is $49, the mapping bundle is $199. See the full list on our website.

That’s it! We hope you had a great turkey day, time to go back to your food coma, we will see you next week.