I have been following this thread with some interest because of my experiences at what was then the new Jeddah airport during the initial few weeks of operation in early 1981. Although my area was nav aids, radio, radar etc, I would occasionally sit supping tea with the controllers, particularly late in the evenings if I had been working late.
One evening an arriving B707 of an African airline was given instructions to taxi to a specific stand. After a while, the controller called the aircraft to see where he was and received the reply to the effect he was on his way to the stand. This happened a few times and eventually the controller asked me to have a look out of the tower to see if the aircraft was at the stand (which was on the opposite side of the tower from the controller).
No aircraft in sight. Eventually, after approximately half an hour, the pilot reported he was now on stand. During that half hour, the controller was telling me how a few airlines were having trouble with the taxiway lighting. Apparently, the old airport had used centreline lighting and the new one was using edge marking (or something along those lines). In the first few days of operation both BA and Swissair had had to request tugs to pull them back from the brink of doom and back onto the taxiway centre. They had followed the lighting, assuming it was the centre line they were following and found it was in fact the edge and they had just managed to stop short of falling down the rather large concrete monsoon drains.
The next day, coming up the steps to the tower to work, I was met with a pilot from the African airline being walked down the steps with a Saudi Air Force guard hanging on each arm, obviously under arrest. I went up to the tower and asked my friend from the previous evening what was going on. He said "Remember the B707 that took half an hour to park last night?" Yes. "Well go and have a look at it over by the maintenance area". The aircraft had scraped wings, buggered engines etc and looked as if it had really been in the wars.
Apparently, the pilot got lost on the taxi to the stand and had driven into one of these monsoon drains. Rather than admit a colossal cock-up, he forced the aircraft out of the drain and trundled around the airport until he found the stand. Nobody reported anything until the following morning when people turned up for the return flight! The most vivid memory I have of that incident was the image of the pilot being escorted away. He had the biggest grin I have ever seen on a face, from ear to ear!