Plane crash: Pilot dies in crash during gender reveal party in Mexico

MEXICO — A pilot has died after the plane he was flying as part of a gender reveal party in Mexico crashed on Sunday.

Video posted online shows the plane releasing pink smoke as it flies over a couple waiting in front of a sign that reads “Oh baby,” surrounded by pink and blue balloons.

The recording captures the moment the plane’s left wing appears to separate from the fuselage as it flies away from the group of people below.

Authorities in Navolato, Sinaloa state, told CNN en Español, CNN’s sister network, that the pilot died in the hospital following the crash.

Alan Francisco Rangel of the Sinaloa Red Cross told CNN that paramedics treated the pilot at the crash site in San Pedro, Navolato and then took him to a local hospital, where he died.

Authorities did not release the pilot’s name, and the cause of the crash is not clear.

No further injuries were reported as a result of the accident.

Gender reveal parties were conceived as a fun way of telling family and friends whether they were about to welcome a girl or a boy into the world.

Originally low-key affairs involving the cutting of a cake with colored icing, or maybe some fireworks, some expectant parents have decided instead on risky and expensive gender reveals.

At a 2017 reveal in Arizona, guests were asked to shoot at a makeshift target scrawled with the words “Boy” and “Girl.”

When the target – packed with the highly explosive Tannerite – exploded, a blue cloud poofed upward and immediately ignited the surrounding brush.

It was a boy, and the party ended up costing the guilty patrons more than $8 million in restitution after it set off a wildfire spanning 47,000 acres.

And in Iowa in October 2019, a gender reveal party went south when the family unintentionally built a pipe bomb. When the device went off the entire pipe exploded, sending shrapnel flying that hit and killed a grandmother standing nearby.

CNN contributed to this report.