The commander of the Navy’s elite Blue Angels demonstration team confirmed Thursday that a flyover of a crowded beach the day before was “unsafe” by the team’s safety standards. Jet blast from the pass on Wednesday over a Pensacola, Florida beach sent chairs and umbrellas tumbling, according to a Navy spokesperson.

The team leader’s comments came the morning after the pass. Later in the day, senior civilian military leaders began circulating social media posts that celebrated the low flyover.

“The pilot found himself, unfortunately, in a situation that we would deem unsafe over the beach,” Navy Capt. Adam Bryan told reporters Thursday. “We never intend to fly over the crowd that low, and we’ll heavily debrief it to ensure that, one, we continue on with safe flight demonstrations, and that we learn from those different things that happen.”

Bryan, who has commanded the Blue Angels since April 2024 and was the 2016 Naval Air Force Atlantic Pilot of the Year, did not say if the flight status of the pilot who made the pass had changed after the incident, but said the maneuver would get a “heavy look” in the team’s normal debriefing and review process.

The jet’s pass came during an “arrival” maneuver over Pensacola, Florida, and was captured on video by dozens of beach goers. The maneuver came during an early flight in the Red, White and Blue Air Show, an annual three-day event featuring dozens of planes performing over the city’s beaches, with flights by the Blue Angels as its centerpiece.

Pentagon responds with ‘Carry on, Patriots’

Bryan made clear his comments were his own and focused on flight procedures within the team. Separately, a series of celebratory memes of the flight later spread from senior military leaders and officials at the White House.

A meme from a Defense Department account posted “Carry on Patriots” over a photo of the Navy F/A-18 directly over the crowd. The phrase has become a go-to response for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for questions of military aviation safety. Hegseth has used the phrase twice this year to quash safety reviews of military flights prior to the Blue Angels pass.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao posted “No reprimands. No firings. No problem. No problem” over video of the pass and officials at the White House posted an AI-generated image of the pass with a caption suggesting that safety concerns might be unpatriotic, titling the photo, “It’s OK to love America.”

A flying unit and hometown team

Locals in Pensacola, where the Blue Angels have been based since 1955, have long looked on the unit less as a military unit based nearby than as the city’s adopted hometown team.

Throughout the summer months, residents track the comings and goings of the unit’s eight blue and yellow F/A-18s, flocking to the beach in the hundreds and sometimes thousands when the team is scheduled to return from a far-off air show. Local websites and social media accounts track the team’s likely arrival time (which the Navy does not publicly announce). Local tour boat operators charter special “Blue Angel” cruises when the team is due to perform or practice and the city’s main beach floods with locals hoping to catch the group’s traditional low pass over the main pier.

“We just consider it kind of normal, people are used to them,” one tour boat captain told Task & Purpose. “You just know you can’t have conference calls between 10:30 and noon on days they fly, but nobody complains. They call it the ‘sound of freedom.’”

It was against that local spirit of support that video emerged this week of the jets’ errant beach beach buzz. The team flies with¨ its own meticulously crafted safety and flight rules, FAA regulations forbid even expert pilots from flying fixed-wing planes less than 500 feet over “congested” civilian crowds like an air show.

Bryan’s comments steered well clear of political overtones in his public comments on the flight, insisting only that flight safety is at the heart of the team’s operations, and noting the unit’s close relationship with the public in Pensacola.

“This team means a tremendous amount to this community, and this town, and the city, and the community means so much to us,” Bryan said. “We would not be where we are today without Pensacola.”

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