I wonder just how likely this was to end in disaster. It feels overstated. The pilot in question seemed to think something was wrong, he just hadn't figured it out yet. I imagine he would have seen the aircraft on the taxiway in time to go around on his own if he hadn't been warned off.
I'm having trouble figuring out the timeline. The recording in the article makes it sound like this all happened in a matter of seconds, but it's edited down to the highlights so that's misleading. LiveATC has an archived recording of the event (http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-Twr2-Jul-08-2017..., relevant part starts at about 14:45) but even those appear to have silent parts edited out. (That recording covers a 30 minute period but is only about 18 minutes long.) In the archived recording, about 40 seconds elapse between the plane being told to go around and the "flew directly over us" call, but I don't know how much silence was edited out in between.
Certainly this shouldn't have happened, but I wonder just how bad it actually was.
I'm having trouble figuring out the timeline. The recording in the article makes it sound like this all happened in a matter of seconds, but it's edited down to the highlights so that's misleading. LiveATC has an archived recording of the event (http://archive-server.liveatc.net/ksfo/KSFO-Twr2-Jul-08-2017..., relevant part starts at about 14:45) but even those appear to have silent parts edited out. (That recording covers a 30 minute period but is only about 18 minutes long.) In the archived recording, about 40 seconds elapse between the plane being told to go around and the "flew directly over us" call, but I don't know how much silence was edited out in between.
Certainly this shouldn't have happened, but I wonder just how bad it actually was.