Blue Angels jet to usher in new era

Blue Angels shifting to Super Hornets PENSACOLA, Fla. – The Navy’s Blue Angels are in the early-goings of its 2019 show searson nationwide. But it’s been two former Blues who have been laying the groundwork one of the major changes in the team’s 75-year history. Capt. Ryan Bernacchi, commander of the 2016-17 team, and Cmdr. Frank Weisser, who flew with the Blues twice: 2008-10 and 2016-17, have been working with subject-matter experts to assist the Blue Angels’ change in aircraft for the first time since 1986. The Blue Angels are scheduled to start flying the F/A-18E Super Hornet in 2021, during its 75th anniversary air-show season. Bernacchi and Weisser indicated, in an e-mail to the Pensacola News Journal, that the Super Hornets will make some exciting changes to the team’s demonstration, while ushering in a new era. The pilots had conducted a great deal of work in flight simulators at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. They re-created the current F/A-18s’ baseline airshow moves and established the “diamond, solo and delta maneuvers in the Super Hornet” (simulator), then started to evaluate the flight dynamics differences, he wrote. Overall, the Super Hornets and advanced software will provide pilots with more situational awareness and faster access to critical flight information that will make the “show safer to fly (and) more enjoyable to the crowd," Weisser said. (Pensacola News Journal 04/21/19)