Narrative:

We landed on 28L at sfo. After landing and initial taxi instructions we noticed that our gate was occupied. Ca said he would contact ground and instructed me to contact company operations regarding our gate and if it was still our gate. (My normal SOP would be to contact ground myself first; then contact operations; but I complied with this captain's request). I contacted operations and they said that [the originally assigned gate] was our gate and we would have to wait and contact ground again. When I relayed the information to the captain I asked if he contacted ground and he said no; and that he was waiting for me to get information from operations. I then contacted ground with the information and they [gave taxi instructions] and to contact ramp for a place to hold. I repeated the instructions to the captain; he repeated them back to me; and I also put the instructions in the scratch pad on the FMC for visual backup. He asked me when the gate would be available; and I told him that the operations communications were practically unreadable; so I would ask again when workload permitted. I then told the captain that I would be off the number one radio as I had to call ramp to coordinate our entry to the ramp area and where they wanted to put us. He said he had the number one radio and I looked up the frequency for ramp and attempted to call them. While this was happening; I heard the captain say loudly; 'check right! Check right!' I looked right and saw an aircraft to our right with it's landing and taxi lights off. I was confused with why he was asking check right and just repeated rote; 'check right' and then said 'you're on a cleared taxi route.' I was quite confused because my head was down the whole time trying to coordinate the ground and ramp taxi instructions and was completely out of the loop with the actual taxiing and why he was asking me to check right at non-SOP time. Once we got to the ramp area and were asked to hold; the captain had figured out what went wrong and relayed it to me. He said that he had accidentally turned [on a taxiway closer than the one assigned]. That had put us close to an aircraft that was exiting [the runway]. This encounter ended without incident and we eventually taxied safely to our gate.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier flight crew reported a ground conflict with another aircraft while taxiing to their assigned gate.

Narrative: We landed on 28L at SFO. After landing and initial taxi instructions we noticed that our gate was occupied. CA said he would contact ground and instructed me to contact company operations regarding our gate and if it was still our gate. (My normal SOP would be to contact ground myself first; then contact operations; but I complied with this captain's request). I contacted operations and they said that [the originally assigned gate] was our gate and we would have to wait and contact ground again. When I relayed the information to the captain I asked if he contacted ground and he said no; and that he was waiting for me to get information from operations. I then contacted ground with the information and they [gave taxi instructions] and to contact ramp for a place to hold. I repeated the instructions to the captain; he repeated them back to me; and I also put the instructions in the scratch pad on the FMC for visual backup. He asked me when the gate would be available; and I told him that the operations communications were practically unreadable; so I would ask again when workload permitted. I then told the captain that I would be off the number one radio as I had to call ramp to coordinate our entry to the ramp area and where they wanted to put us. He said he had the number one radio and I looked up the frequency for ramp and attempted to call them. While this was happening; I heard the captain say loudly; 'Check right! Check right!' I looked right and saw an aircraft to our right with it's landing and taxi lights off. I was confused with why he was asking check right and just repeated rote; 'Check right' and then said 'You're on a cleared taxi route.' I was quite confused because my head was down the whole time trying to coordinate the ground and ramp taxi instructions and was completely out of the loop with the actual taxiing and why he was asking me to check right at non-SOP time. Once we got to the ramp area and were asked to hold; the captain had figured out what went wrong and relayed it to me. He said that he had accidentally turned [on a taxiway closer than the one assigned]. That had put us close to an aircraft that was exiting [the runway]. This encounter ended without incident and we eventually taxied safely to our gate.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.