DJI Revokes Operator’s Certificate After Agricultural Drone Used to Lift Person 10 Meters Into the Air

An agricultural drone built to spray citrus trees got used to hoist a person more than 10 meters off the ground in Fengjie County, Chongqing. DJI identified the violation through its own inspection process and responded accordingly: the operator, identified only as Zheng, had his agricultural UAV pilot certificate revoked on March 19, 2026, and is barred from reapplying for one year. The announcement was issued by Dazhou Innovation Agricultural UAV Technology Co., Ltd., DJI’s affiliated certification body for agricultural pilots in China, and was first reported by NEWUAS.

What Happened

In December 2025, operator Zheng used an agricultural drone to lift a person up a hillside at a citrus orchard in Fengjie County, Chongqing — more than 10 meters above the ground.

DJI revoked Zheng’s Agricultural UAV Pilot Certificate (No. **2581) and prohibited him from reapplying for 12 months, citing Article 62, Point 8 of China’s State Council Interim Regulations on UAV Flight Management. The company simultaneously issued a public warning to all agricultural drone pilots and students, laying out a hard list of prohibited uses: flying over crowds, lifting people, and using spraying equipment to harm others.

DJI’s Formal Grounds for the Revocation

Under China’s State Council Interim Regulations on UAV Flight Management, agricultural drones are approved exclusively for farming, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries. The rules are explicit: any operator who uses an agricultural UAV to endanger public safety or the personal safety of others can have their certificate canceled or renewal refused. DJI repeats this warning in its own agricultural training courses.

Zheng’s case cleared the legal threshold without ambiguity. Lifting a person more than 10 meters off the ground on a machine engineered to carry liquid payload, not a human body, is precisely what the regulation targets. According to the announcement, DJI identified the violation through its own inspection process rather than a third-party complaint. That distinction matters: it suggests DJI is actively monitoring how its certified operators use their machines, not simply waiting for reports to come in.

What Agricultural Drones Are Not Designed to Do

Agricultural UAVs like the DJI Agras series are built around a single core assumption: the payload is liquid, distributed evenly across tanks, and managed by automated pumping systems. Every aspect of the flight model — weight balance, center of gravity, rotor load distribution — is calibrated for that scenario. A human body introduces uneven, unpredictable weight that the flight controller was never programmed to manage.

This is not a theoretical concern. We covered a video from Pará, Brazil in February where a man attempted to ride a DJI agricultural drone. The physics problem is identical in both cases: large, rigid propellers spinning at high RPM do not tolerate sudden shifts in load distribution. Loss of control does not mean a soft landing.

DJI’s announcement identified two categories of prohibited behavior. Acts that endanger public safety include flying agricultural UAVs over densely populated areas or directly above crowds, and using them to harm others. Acts that endanger personal safety include using agricultural UAVs to lift or carry people, deploying spraying equipment against individuals, and any conduct that creates serious physical danger.

DJI’s Enforcement Authority in China

In China, DJI holds a position most manufacturers don’t: the company doesn’t just build agricultural drones, it administers the certification system for agricultural UAV pilots through a state-delegated framework. That means DJI can investigate violations and pull certificates within that program, backed by state regulations. This case is a direct example of that authority in action.

The announcement was signed and stamped by Dazhou Innovation Agricultural UAV Technology Co., Ltd. — the DJI-affiliated entity that runs the agricultural pilot certification program in China. The stamp and date, March 19, 2026, make this an official enforcement action, not a public rebuke.

The contrast with the United States is worth noting. In the U.S., the FAA holds exclusive certificate authority. The FAA’s 2025 enforcement report showed drone pilots fined up to $36,770 and at least one pilot receiving a permanent revocation. The enforcement mechanisms are structurally different on both sides of the Pacific, but the direction is the same: regulators and manufacturers are moving toward harder consequences for dangerous drone misuse.

Agricultural Drone Adoption Is Accelerating, and So Are the Risks

China leads the world in agricultural drone deployment by a considerable margin. A 2025 Michigan State University study published in Science confirmed that agricultural drones are reshaping farming faster than almost any technology in history. The DJI Agras line — including the T100, T70P, and T25P that DJI launched at Agritechnica 2025 in Hannover — is at the center of that shift, with DJI pushing into European, Central Asian, and African markets.

More operators means more edge cases. As the certified pilot pool grows, incidents like the Fengjie orchard stunt become statistically more likely. That’s partly why DJI made this announcement public rather than handling it quietly — it’s aimed directly at the pilot and student community. This is what enforcement looks like.

DroneXL’s Take

People are riding agricultural drones in Brazil. People are using them as improvised lifts in Chinese orchards. These aren’t isolated acts of individual stupidity — they’re a predictable consequence of deploying increasingly powerful machines into the hands of a rapidly growing operator base, in communities where the culture hasn’t caught up with the physics.

DJI’s decision to publicly revoke Zheng’s certificate is the right call. The one-year ban is on the lenient end — the FAA has issued permanent revocations for conduct that posed less direct physical danger, and lifting a person more than 10 meters on an unrated aircraft in a working orchard is genuinely life-threatening. A fall from that height, or a propeller strike, isn’t survivable. The public format of the announcement, directed at all pilots and students, signals that DJI understands this is a systemic pressure building across its operator base, not a one-off.

The detail that DJI caught this through its own inspection process is the most telling part. Whether that monitoring extends to markets outside China is still an open question. As agricultural drone use expands globally and the certified operator base grows, DJI has strong incentive to show regulators in every market that its certification program has real enforcement behind it — not just paperwork.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.