Several players have reported that thier helicopter flares (for minis, scrappies, and attack) have failed—one player yesterday reported that they had it happen three times that day (with millions in net worth I guess you can just... buy another and not report it lol). I've been seeing this in chat with increasing frequency. I personally experienced this with a mini. I had two minicopters in my inventory (it's a long story), separated right-click-dragged one into my hotbar, threw it, and nothing came down. However, when I pulled the remaining one out of my inventory into my hotbar, it called in the mini without issues.
This could be related to this bug, but I figured I'd let y'all decide:
Video of the flare after being thrown: