A gender reveal that went sideways led to a plane crash in Texas, according to a U.S. agency.
The plane crash took place Sept. 7 in the town of Turkey, located 475 kilometres west of Dallas, Texas.
In a news release, the National Transportation Safety Board said the pilot was flying at a low altitude when he “dumped about 350 gallons of pink water for a gender reveal.”
The plane “got too slow” before it stalled and crashed, sustaining “substantial” damage, says the release.
There were two people on the plane, which was designed for one person.
The NTSB report notes that the pilot said the gender reveal was for a friend. The pilot escaped uninjured while the passenger sustained minor injuries, according to the report.
“The pilot reported that there were no pre-accident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation,” the report said.
The crash and its place among similar stories in the wider phenomenon of gender reveals gone wrong made headlines in CNN, NBC, and The New York Times.
Gender reveal stunts and their unintended and at-times devastating results have made the news multiple times over the last few years.
In 2017, a U.S. border agent’s gender reveal stunt resulted in a large wildfire in Arizona, after an explosive-laden package was triggered by a gunshot and ignited dry grass in a field. That fire wound up costing around USD$8 million in damage.
Just last month, a 56-year-old woman in Iowa died after a gender reveal announcement resulted in an explosion.
The family in that story had made a stand for a controlled explosion that would spew coloured powder, but local police said the use mechanism had turned it into a “pipe bomb.” When it exploded, the woman was hit in the head with a piece of metal and pronounced dead at the scene.
— With files by Global News’ Josh K. Elliott and The Associated Press
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