At 11:46 p.m. local time, Air Canada Flight 759, carrying 135 passengers and 5 crew members,[4] was cleared to land on Runway 28R.

[7] According to preliminary Transportation Board investigation results, as the weather was clear, the pilots of AC759 were not required to utilize the instrument landing system and relied instead on a visual approach, as typical for the prevailing conditions.

[7] Following a reconstruction of events, one pilot not involved in the incident noted that had the crew waited five more seconds before pulling up, it would have collided with the third airplane (UAL 863) on the taxiway.

[22] The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was informed of the incident on July 9, and took the lead on the investigation, with assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

[24] Other pilots pointed out that some airlines require all aircraft to use the instrument landing system (ILS) regardless of weather or visibility, which would have led the crew to realize that they were not lined up with runway 28R.

[2] Dave Jones, then California Insurance Commissioner and a passenger on AC759, wrote a letter to Air Canada a week after the incident requesting their cooperation with the investigation.

[6][15] Preliminary NTSB investigation results from flight data recorder telemetry, released on August 2, 2017, indicate that AC759 reached a minimum altitude of 59 feet (18 m) above ground level, comparable to the 55 ft 10 in (17.02 m) tail height of a Boeing 787-9, two of which were on Taxiway C.[7][25] The cockpit voice recorder had been overwritten before the investigation was launched,[12] as C-FKCK flew three more flights on July 8 before the NTSB was informed of the near-miss on July 9.

The crew's body clock was at the Toronto 03:00 Eastern Time: the first officer had no significant rest for 12 h, and the captain for 19 h – he would not have been able to fly under US pilot fatigue rules.

[27] The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) received six recommendations: identifying approaches requiring an unusual manual frequency input; displaying it noticeably on aeronautical charts; reviewing NOTAMs to prioritize and present relevant information; requiring aircraft landing in B or C airspace to alert pilots when not aligned with a runway; modifying airports to alert on collision risks and clearly showing closed runways, as construction lighting on 28L looked like ramp lighting.

[26] Air Canada is simplifying its SFO approach charts and includes SFO-specific training in aircraft simulators, trains its staff to reduce expectation bias, and will retrofit new aircraft like the Airbus A220 and Boeing 737 MAX with dual head-up displays to enhance situational awareness in low-visibility, high-risk approaches.

It also dismisses a comparable taxiway mishap in Seattle-Tacoma by Alaska Airlines (Flight 27) in December 2015, that was still in the preliminary investigation stage at the time (NTSB assigned identification number DCA16IA036 to the incident).

[31] Following the incident, in early August the Federal Aviation Administration modified nighttime landing procedures at SFO, forbidding visual approaches at night "when an adjacent parallel runway is closed" and replacing them with instrument approaches, either ILS or satellite-based, and requiring two air traffic controllers in the control tower "until the late-night arrival rush is over".