PENSACOLA (AP) – The U.S. Navy is cutting the practice schedule of its elite Blue Angels flight demonstration team to save money, the military announced Wednesday.

The six F/A 18 Hornets will no longer streak over the skies of Pensacola in their signature formations on Tuesday mornings, but will continue their normal flight schedules Wednesday through Sunday, Marine Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger said. The squadron of top Naval aviators traditionally do not fly on Mondays.

“We’ve just canceled one practice so far. We don’t know if there will be anything greater than that,” he said.

But he said the Blue Angels will not cancel any of the 27 remaining air show appearances on the 2009 schedule.

The elimination of the popular Tuesday morning practice was a disappointment for the thousands of fans gathered outside the Museum of Naval Aviation on Pensacola Naval Air Station to watch Wednesday’s practice, said Bob Rasmussen, a retired Navy captain, former Blue Angel and the museum’s director. Officials announced the cuts to the crowd during Wednesday’s practice.

The Tuesday and Wednesday public practices typically draw between 3,000 and 6,000 visitors to the museum, located next to the Blue Angels headquarters at the Navy base, he said. The crowd watches from bleachers outside the museum as a volunteer explains the low-flying, high-speed and often breath-taking maneuvers.

Rasmussen said the decision to end Tuesday practices could hurt the museum.

“How much it will hurt us, we are not sure. I think we should get even more people in here on Wednesdays now,” he said.

But Rasmussen, who led an attack squadron aboard the USS Oriskany in Vietnam and flew with the Blue Angels in the 1970s, isn’t worried that cutting practice times will compromise the safety of the pilots or people on the ground.

“The longer you do this in the course of an air show season, the more proficient you normally are. After you’ve done it for several months day-in and day-out it becomes almost second nature,” he said.

And Rasmussen said the cut in flying days makes sense considering the tough demands on military spending.

“The people at the point of the spear get the highest priority and everybody understands that including the Blue Angels,” he said.

A Blue Angels pilot died at a 2007 air show after becoming disoriented in the midst of a high-speed turn and crashing his jet outside a Marine Corps station in Beaufort, S.C.

Dunkelberger said safety is the team’s top concern in every situation and leaders considered safety carefully before cutting the practice schedule.

“If that was ever a concern, we would make sure that wasn’t an issue,” he said.