"Fun" on SFO Ground 28 April

[N433UA]

Long time lurker, first time poster!

Was on a UA redeye flight last night (28 April) that featured channel 9, and I was amazed at the sour attitude of the woman controlling SFO Ground at the time. It was 10:30/11 local and it got quite busy, and she was combined ground and clearance delivery, which seemed overwhelming. Anyway, attaching both full clips I heard as well as some excerpts I edited. (Note: The EVA Air exchange happened over about 5 minutes so I condensed that.)

Anyway, enjoy!

[GeoffSM1]

After listening a to a little of the first of the original files I have to say she did appear to have far too much to deal with although I had trimmed the silences before listening and this may have distorted the situation to some extent. Nevertheless, I think it might be interesting to have observations from someone on here who has personal experience of working in the Control Tower environment.

[silagi]

I am a ramp controller at SFO and I can tell you that time of night can get super crazy.  United has a bank that goes out around 10:30 and other airlines are launching their red-eyes and there are a tons of arrivals at that time of the night.   There is also lots of towing going on with crews  towing aircraft off gates to remote overnight parking.  Many of the inbound flights end up having to wait for occupied gates which further complicates things.  Some nights especially during the peak travel seasons, it can easily turn into complete gridlock.