Renowned artist Cai Guoqiang organized a drone fireworks show on the beach in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, mainland China on December 8th, using 2000 drones. However, during the performance, a large number of drones crashed into the sea, sparking a discussion the following day.
A viral video showed a dense formation of drones in the sky, which suddenly started to plummet like dumplings, with some falling onto the land and most dropping into the sea.
Eyewitness Ms. Lin reported to Duete News on the 9th, stating that the accident occurred around 10 minutes into the performance. At that time, thousands of drones performing suddenly surged towards the field behind and began to fall, witnessed by the audience present.
“Initially, we thought the drones were part of the performance coming towards our direction. But as we noticed them getting closer and falling down, I felt something was off, so I hurriedly moved backwards,” said Ms. Lin. “One drone stopped less than 10 meters away from me, then flew away.”
Recalling the incident, Ms. Lin added, “I still shudder when I think about it now. If a visitor’s drone collided with the performance drones or if they uncontrollably dropped towards the crowd, the consequences would be unimaginable.”
According to Ms. Lin, a few minutes after the drone incident, the performance resumed and continued for a few more segments before ending. She inquired with several staff members on-site, who all confirmed, “Yes, there was a drone incident during the performance.”
Fortunately, the incident did not result in any casualties.
The trending topic “Cai Guoqiang’s drone fireworks show has many drones crashing into the sea,” made its way to the hot searches on Weibo, sparking discussions among netizens.
Duete News reached out to Afei Intelligent Control (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd., responsible for the drone performance, with a company representative stating, “We are not able to disclose specific details at the moment.”
An article on the NetEase account “Little Cat and Fox” claimed that after the incident, Cai Guoqiang mentioned that the drones might have been jammed and requested the nearby police or audience members to turn off the interference device, as otherwise, all drones would fall down.
Citing a post by a netizen, the report confirmed that the drone drops were caused by police interference. Due to strong winds that day, some drones used for aerial photography did not last their assigned recording time due to battery issues. As a result, backup drones were put into use for filming. However, since the backup drones were not registered with radio frequencies to air traffic control, the police detected unidentified drones approaching the performance formation and quickly activated the jammer. Due to poor visibility caused by fog, it was difficult to judge altitude and distance accurately. As a result, possibly due to incorrect power adjustments, as soon as the jammer was turned on, all drones at the scene were brought down.
These revelations shed light on the technical challenges and regulatory lapses that contributed to the drone mishap during Cai Guoqiang’s ambitious display, prompting a rethink of safety measures for future similar events.