Did Blanco think to pick up the phone and call the CEOs of American and Southwest? There are procedures these airlines follow, and cancelling flights under these conditions is normal.
Airlines are past PR; they're hanging on by their fingernails, doing what it takes to survive.
Blanco is armchair quarterbacking with this gratuitous shot at the airlines.
Shot at the airlines remember that if you have the misfortune to be in place of a natural disater esp how will bailed them out after 911
Airlines also need ground crews, who all live in the area and were told to evac.
Well, yes, clearly the mayor and governor's inability to quickly act proactively and make decisions made this worse. Plus either an insufficent pre-strike evac plan or failure to effectively implement some of it (or likely both.) How exactly did they expect tourists to get out? No evidence of any plans for that, or at least no signs of implementation of such. I bet you are correct, and she didn't call the airlines. This wasn't the usual hurricane situation, and most knew that if the hurricane continued on its predicted course, it would be far worse than 9/11. An extraordinary request of the airlines on her part should have been a no brainer.
Nearly 4 decades of warnings, predictions, and knowing this would happen, yet they were still woefully unprepared. Known to all that evac would take 48-72 hours, yet no mandatory call until 24 hours were left, no mandatory shut down of nonessential businesses on Saturday night and Sunday, on and on and on.
Looking for someone to place blame to deflect from her own incompetence
Right .. it's called being a leader .. a professional executive in charge .. having the spine to make the tough decisions. Oooops, sorry -- I know .. I shouldn't be so hard on the poor spiritually fragile creature.