No, they started pulling up just before hearing from the tower; click on the link at the bottom of the referenced page: "The full investigative update and other information about the incident are available online at: https://go.usa.gov/xRPFk​ " for more detail, including:

o At 2356:04 PDT, ACA759 reappeared on the local controller’s ASDE-X/ASSC display as it passed over the first airplane positioned on taxiway C.

o About 2.5 seconds after advancing the thrust levers, the minimum altitude recorded on the FDR was 59 ft agl.

o At 2356:10 PDT, the local controller directed ACA759 to go around. The airplane had already begun to climb at this point (see figure 4).

This means that if they hadn't acted until they heard from the tower, it would have almost certainly been a disaster.

Yeah, the 3 video frames in that report are matched to transmissions the timestamps. Unless the angle is deceiving, you can sorta visually extrapolate from the descent of the first two at :01 and :04, that 6 seconds later, when the go-around was give at :10, they would have been on the ground had they not pulled up.

If you listen to the recording the pilot suspected something was not right, that's why he asked for confirmation that the runway is clear. Most likely he already anticipated a high probability of a go-around.

They teach you in driving school to never overtake in a two-way road unless you are 100% sure you can make it. I'd assume pilots would he held to at least equal standards...

Driving school does everything it can to dissuade you from ever overtaking on a 2-lane because driving in a big, slow line is what's acceptable for the lowest common denominator.

Driving school treats people like idiots by default.

Professional training assumes people have the capacity to evaluate situations and make their own decisions on the appropriate course of action.

Comparing training intended for the general public and training for professionals is very much a stretch IMO.

Does the NTSB do what-ifs? Seems odd for an investigative body to do guesswork on what type of disasters could have occurred.

The NTSB does not do what-ifs in the sense of calculating expected body count had an accident not been averted. They do, however, often investigate the performance envelope involved in an incident/accident and the timeline for possible corrective actions. So in an investigation it's quite common for the NTSB to look into how initiating corrective action at different points in time would have affected the outcome. e.g.: Sentences like "the pilots could have [taken corrective action X] until Y seconds before collision is a pretty standard sentence to see in an investigation report.

This kind of information is important for determining the available safety margin and the proper changes to recommend in order to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Yeah, that kind of conclusion makes more sense as opposed to "If the events wouldn't have played out as they did, X would have happened". No one really cares, except to know that it would have been bad, which is why there is an investigation to begin with.

Agreed. It's fairly uninteresting (from an accident-prevention perspective, not a news-selling one) to muse about cutting it close, as soon as you get into seconds-territory, you're way too close. The fuck-up was lining up for the wrong approach in the first place, landing on the taxi-way is insanely dangerous, even if it's empty.

That's what I think as well, it should be sufficient to know that terrible things would happen and like you say, just getting in to a situation like that is bad enough.