Originally Posted by
DIBO
... SFO TWR with all its equipment could also have picked up the misalignment much earlier. Not required to, but could/maybe should have...
Nope, they should NOT have noticed the misalignment.
Having listened to comm's before and well after the incident, he (as in only one) was too d#mned busy handling arriving/departing traffic 28R, interleaved with many departures 01L, combining GND/TWR positions, explaining to people he was the only one up there, getting everybody over and over again on TWR freq., handeling gate position not yet free, people uncertain about their gate having to call OPS, people messing up taxi instructions, English procifiency levels with room for improvement, .... Well the usual stuff...but all this with still a lot of traffic, enough to keep one person very busy.
Contributing factor maybe? ATCO staffing levels not allowing an extra pair of eyes to monitor things and even for visual approaches to do a spot check on the radar screen, knowing that the rwy config (dark 28L) was not 100% "as usual"?
I know, keep on dreaming, we are in the age of cost cutting...