Instrument drifts introduce additional phase errors into atmospheric wind measurement of Doppler asymmetric spatial heterodyne spectroscopy (DASH). Aiming at the phase sensitivity of DASH to instrument drifts, in this paper we calculate the optical path difference (OPD) and present an accurate formula of DASH interferogram. By controlling variables in computational ray-tracing simulations and laboratory experiments, it is indicated that initial phase is directly determined by incident wavenumber, OPD offset and field of view (FOV). Accordingly, it is indicated that retrieved phase of DASH is sensitive to slight structural change caused by instrument drift, which provides the proof of necessary-to-track and -correct phase errors from instrument drifts.