Mystery Surrounds Two Marines Scrubbed From Elite Blue Angels Team

Two Marines have been scrubbed from the roster of the U.S. Navy’s elite Blue Angels stunt-flying team, but the details around their abrupt exits are few and far between.

Marine Maj. Scott Laux was the first to be removed from the team, the New York Post reported. A third-year member who served as narrator for the group, Laux was reportedly pulled from the last performance this year for “failing to uphold standards” — but there was no explanation regarding which standards he might have violated.

The Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) confirmed Laux’s departure on Friday with a statement from the public affairs office: “Blue Angel #6 was removed from the team for failing to uphold the standards expected of members of the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron and will not participate in the team’s remaining performance this season.”

That last performance — the annual homecoming air show at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida — took place on November 6 and 7 with only five of the usual six jets in the air.

But the story did not end there: as The Aviationist first reported, Marine Capt. Danielle Cribb was also scrubbed from the team in recent weeks. She had listed Laux as her “mentor.”

Cribb, who served as the Blue Angels’ Public Affairs Officer, disappeared from the team’s website sometime between August 7 and October 16, The Aviationist reported based on archived snapshots stored on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Both her bio and photo were removed from the website — and Laux’s have as well.

According to the now-removed bio, Laux spent nearly a decade as a Marine fighter pilot in the cockpit of an F/A-18 Hornet before joining the Blue Angels in 2024. In the 2025 season, he became the group’s narrator — and in 2026, he was moved to the No. 6 position, flying as the opposing solo.

The opposing solo position flies a series of high-speed head-on crossing passes, mirror-image maneuvers, and minimum-radius turns in coordination with the lead solo — the No. 5 position.

Losing the opposing solo means the team’s lead solo flies the patterns alone. Opposing crossing maneuvers, for example, would be replaced by single-aircraft passes executed by the lead solo while the other four jets fly in the traditional diamond pattern. Instead of maneuvers like the “Mirror Image Dirty Pass,” in which the lead and opposing solos fly together (one inverted and one upright), the lead solo executes an “Inverted Dirty Flat Pass” down the flight line.

The rigorous training — which includes more than 120 practice flights during winter training at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California — does not allow the team to keep backup pilots on standby.

None of the reports have indicated whether Laux or Cribbs have been permanently removed. Cribb’s family members, according to the New York Post, have said that her removal from the team is unrelated to Laux.

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