Gender reveal events have been making the news for years — and usually not in a good way. Just a few weeks ago, a woman died from a gender-reveal-party explosion. A reveal last year in Arizona produced a 47,000-acre wildfire after the father shot a target full of highly explosive tannerite, causing more than $8 million in damages.
The latest mishap in gender reveal news? A plane crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported the incident, which occurred in Texas in early September. The expecting parents wanted to elevate their gender reveal — sky-high.
“The pilot reported, that while maneuvering at a low altitude in an aerial applicator airplane, he dumped about 350 gallons of pink water for a gender reveal,” the NTSB statement revealed.
But after dumping all that water, the airplane “got too slow,” causing it to aerodynamically stalled and “impact terrain,” coming to rest “inverted.” That’s a gentle way of saying the plane crashed and landed upside-down.
The airplane “sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, right wing, and empennage.” The pilot reported “no pre-accident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.”
No one was seriously injured in the gender-reveal plane crash, including the pilot, which is fortunate, but surprising: a Federal Aviation Administration inspector reported that there were two people aboard the single-seat plane, which definitely doesn’t meet regulations. 350 extra gallons of water doesn’t help either.
Though it’s rare for gender reveal events to go this badly, they rarely go well. At best, there’s some extra blue or pink glitter to clean up, but at worst, people can (and often do) get badly injured.
The intentions may be good, but gender reveals have only been around for about a decade. The trend has grown so much that people try to one-up each other with more dangerous and elaborate stunts, all just to tell their friends and family whether they’re having a boy or a girl. Sure. celebrate your new addition with your loved ones — but there’s a lot more to your baby than pink or blue glitter. Especially if someone’s getting hurt.
