So fancy myself as getting a little confident with my Mavic Air - I decided to take two trips to the woods over the Friday and Saturday last week. Walk the dogs - take some footage etc. Tried my kit before I left all was good. Then for some reason it needed a firmware upgrade soon as I arrived at the woods. No bother. Decent signal and unlimited data plan. Upgrade complete and I quickly drained two batteries with some 200ft overhead and far and wide Ariel shots.
Saturday- rocks up to Same area. Did some high level 4K shots then decided to use a bit of active track action. Walked probably half a mile with a mixture of high and low video. Surprised to see my battery had hit around 3 minutes so bought it down. THEN at only about 5/10 feet away it decides it’s lost signal. Initiated return to home - straight up into the trees! Bounced off one and righted itself then did it again off more branches. At this point I’m full panic. I’m clicking cancel on return to home but I assume as it thinks there is no signal it ignored me. It then bounced off another tree and thankfully landed in grass, which stopped the blades. I assume looking at the return home settings prior to take off is a Top Tip. Mavic had a chip on a blade but was unscathed- thankfully
As a new Air owner I have not tried the RTH as yet relying on full manual control which I still need to sharpen up. Chris showed me some advanced settings when we had a few hours tutorial so I am aware I have a ways to go still. Good post as this helps us newbies hopefully avoid issues that are not always obvious as beginners. Have to say though the visual of your Air attacking trees 
Glad the outcome was damage limitation. Will you pop some shots for us at some point? Cheers 
Sure will. I did loose about half a stone as it was bouncing around. I’m a little concerned that it lost ‘connection’. I noticed the latest patch for firmware was to help battery use which is a worry as it was almost directly after I got the low battery warning.
This isn’t strange … if the critical battery action is set to initiate RTH.
The first thing RTH will do is fly up to the height set for RTH, so something to consider when flying under trees. You may want to change the RTH action, and you may want to change the critical battery action to hover or land in these conditions.
Yep. But My point is RTH needs to be considered on what you intend to do that day. So stood on a hillside and not moving - RTH is great when it comes home. Just for the less experienced and junior of the forums where we simply fly - it’s something we need to consider. Like you say - in trees 
RTH is a failsafe, I’d suggest not letting your battery get to 3% or less and you won’t have this problem. Even without the trees that’s a hell of a risk.
… or whatever the setting is that one has … that can be (should be?) more than 3%… and can trigger far earlier if at distance to ensure you actually reach Home. 
It was three minutes…not 3%. I’d be running after it at 3%.
Sorry, my mistake. I’d set the battery warning to go off around 20% and bring it back at that point with the Air. The remaining battery level is always dynamic and not fixed so a slight head wind could dramatically change your remaining time. Still, no permanent harm done. They’re resilient buggers.
So true! I was amazed. I have the DJI cover but didn’t really want to be sending it off.