Hmm, listening to the instructions I can kind of see how the American Airlines flight crew may have misunderstood instructions. It was also helpful for me to see the aerodrome chart to understand the context. In reality, they needed to turn right at a five-way intersection between taxiways A, B, J and K:
I'm an aviation n00b, but not knowing exactly what the signage looks like at that taxiway fustercluck I can imagine if it wasn't signed very, very well it could seem very confusing to the flight crews. They were cleared to cross a runway, and instead of hanging a right at K they hung a right at J. If JFK ground control had said "American one-zero-six heavy
turn right at Kilo and cross runway three-one-left" instead of the actually spoken "American one-zero-six heavy cross runway three-one-left at Kilo," it would have been more immediately obvious to me. Arguably they shouldn't have had to, because signage should have had a right arrow at taxiway K anyway, but just that extra little bit of context and I doubt this ever would have happened.
I find the ATC chatter interesting, insofar as about half the time
I can't understand what the hell anyone is saying. I understand the need for expediency, as the air traffic controllers—or rather, ground control in particular—are super-busy. But everybody is so motormouthed that communications gets garbled super-easily. Maybe I'm just slow...
All of this said, wouldn't there be a runway entrance light lit up to tell the American Airlines flight crew to stop...?