Controllers in the tower do not have a good visual perspective to see runway alignment. I don't think they would have caught this.

At night, there are many visual cues to see the runway environment - it sounds to me like this complacent pilot ignored many red flags and was about to drive his plane on top of those on the taxiway.

A big heavy airliner can't just stop its decent instantly; it's a good thing that pilot on the ground chimed in when he did.

I betcha the landing pilot won't have a job pretty soon.