In theory.
However, it may be that person A has to report to person B has to report to person C has to report to person D has to report to person E. At any of these points, it is possible someone's already on a call, on the toilet, at lunch etc. when the communication comes in. And maybe they need to check some things before they report on. And maybe they stop for some pleasantries on the call itself, etc. Delays can mount up.
To be cynical, however, this could also be deployed as a bullshit excuse for not taking action in good time, when it could have been done. It would probably be bullshit that's very hard to prove as dishonest.
It's worth further pointing out that in this case, the flights landed
hours after the order came in, and the Trump administration's initial excuse for it wasn't an inability to reach them, but instead to plead that it was a fait accompli on the grounds that the planes were outside of US airspace and they reasoned that the ruling therefore "is not applicable" (which, frankly, is legal bullshit and amounts to a tacit admission that they
consciously chose not to comply with the order because they unilaterally decided that it
didn't count) when the written order came in at 7:26 p.m. However, it's further worth pointing out that while the
written order didn't come in until 7:26, the oral order had been issued at 6:48 p.m, 40 minutes prior. and entailed "turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane". Compliance could literally have been achieved by landing at the destination, refueling, and flying back with the passengers, if needs be. Moreover, two of the planes in question were still in the air when the written order came in, the third didn't even
take off until
after the written order came in.
Never mind that the point and purpose of an oral order is that the order is put into force then and there
, effective immediately
so as to avoid the delay of waiting for the written order. It is every bit as binding as a written order, so saying that they were waiting for the written order is legal nonsense.
And considering that the Trump administration has since responded to the judge's efforts to see the flight logs - to make sure that a good faith effort to comply was made - by declaring that the judge had "no justification" to look for that information? And that moreover, that has spurred them to demand that the judge be impeached for it? There's ample reason to doubt Trump et al's "nothing could be done" position even before considering that Trump is
quite infamous for non-compliance until he runs out the clock and then treating the end result as not worth rectifying. Never mind that they keep on talking out of both sides of their mouth about it, simultaneously claiming that 1) there was nothing they could do about the situation (i.e., that they tried but failed), 2) that they "
ignored it but didn't defy it", and 3) unilaterally declaring that the order was unlawful so as to paint their non-compliance as taking a stand against it (i.e., that they consciously decided to defy it). To be direct, the benefit of the doubt simply does not apply here.