6 Blue Angels Across Mount Rainier — From Our Alaska Cruise Ship
We thought we were just standing on the deck of Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth in Seattle, bags still half-unpacked, waiting to sail for Alaska. Then the sky started to roar. My wife and I were on the ship the afternoon of July 30, 2026, the day before Seafair’s official air show. The Blue Angels were only scheduled for practice runs over Lake Washington. We were not expecting a full formation to come out of the haze and slide across the face of Mount Rainier. Six jets. Not five. That is the part that still gets me. After the Pensacola Beach shows, one of the demonstration pilots had been held out of the formation as a safety measure. For days the team had been flying short. Seattle was the first time he was cleared to fly with the squadron again. The morning practice even went up as a smaller group. Then, around 3:30 p.m., all six Super Hornets came back together. We watched them paint a dark little diamond against that enormous white mountain. Rainier just sat there, snow still on the summit in late July, while six Navy jets threaded the air in front of it. From the rail of a cruise ship about to point north, it felt less like an air show and more like the trip announcing itself. Twenty-seven seconds is not enough time to explain how loud it was, or how still the deck got, or how strange it is to start an Alaska cruise with the Blue Angels as the opening act. This clip is the part I keep replaying: six of them, finally six again, with Rainier filling the whole background. Filmed from Queen Elizabeth, Seattle, July 30, 2026, on the eve of our Cunard Alaska sailing. #BlueAngels #Seafair #MountRainier #QueenElizabeth #Cunard #AlaskaCruise #Seattle #Navy #Shorts