How to bind your DJI Mavic Air 2 or Mini 2 to your DJI account for flyaway coverage

DJI recently announced Flyaway coverage for the DJI Mavic Air 2 and DJI Mini 2, but you must bind the drones to your account to make use of the coverage. Here’s a quick tutorial to do so, and an explanation of why you need to do it.

Why do I need to bind?

Flyaway coverage has been added to DJI’s Care Refresh service, meaning those of us who have already purchased it will enjoy the benefits from this welcome addition. Once you have flyaway coverage, you can apply for a replacement unit for a fraction of the retail cost a new drone would cost.

For the Mini 2, it’s $225. For the Mavic Air 2, it’s a little more at $399. You will be able to use the flyaway coverage once per year, provided you have DJI Care Refresh of Care Refresh Plus. The way I understand it is that DJI will send you a new or a refurbished drone that is like new in the case of a flyaway.

To prevent people from exploiting this, DJI will look at flight logs to see what happened, the cause of the incident, and if it will go ahead and provide you with a replacement drone. From the sounds of things, though, it seems like DJI will replace your drone if you’re happy to pay the fee without any issues.

Now, why is binding the drone and the controller so important? The first benefit of binding the drone to your account means no one else can do so. So, if your drone is stolen, it is linked to your account, meaning the other person can still use it, but you can track its usage, including the location.

The second thing is that once you say that your drone is a flyaway, it is then prohibited to fly it. I’m not sure if DJI blocks it from taking off or if you get in trouble for doing so. It should also be noted that you must use the controller you’re bound with the drone for all future flights with it. You could change the controller if you wanted to, however.

How to bind your drone to account

The process to bind the Mavic Air 2 and Mini 2 are the same, but for this, I will be using the Mavic Air 2. If you open your DJI Fly app, you will see a prompt to bind your drone. You can click this prompt if you would like to do so. I will be showing the manual way to do this if the prompt doesn’t show on the screen.

The first thing you want to do is open the DJI Fly app while connected to your drone. From there, you want to click on the profile button in the bottom left corner and then device management on the next screen. You will now see the currently connected drone, the bind status, and the serial numbers for it and the controller.

To bind the drone, hit the bind to account button, where you will then be taken through the process of binding. Be sure to read the information screen and double-check you are using the correct DJI account, and the serial number of the drone is correct. Once your ready to go, hit confirm and wait a few seconds. The drone will now be bound to your account.

Now you need to bind the controller to your account as well. Hit the X in the top left corner, and you will be taken back to the previous screen. From here, you want to click on value-added service, and you will see the replacement service status and controller status.

You want to hit the bind new RC button and follow the steps. You will once again be shown an information screen and a screen confirming the account’s email address, drone’s serial number, and the controller’s serial number. Once you’re happy with everything, click confirm, and the controller should be bound to your account.

If you are having any issues or would like to watch a video version of this post, be sure to check it out below:

Photo: Josh Spires and DJI