This made some headlines with passengers in the terminal thinking it was going to crash into them...I can see why some would think that. I'm somewhat surprised there wasn't an announcement letting all passengers know a celebration of their last international flight would be that. Did the passengers on the plane even know? They did get a water canon salute out of Miami so some may not have been surprised with the buzzing of the tower.
Hot dogging nearly always ends in the pilots facing discipline of some sort. We had an F-111D pilot on his last USAF flight who did an aileron roll on his last overhead approach and landing just after pitching out. Had a nice Guard job lined up when he got out. They cancelled it. Poor WSO in the right seat got fired, too, even though he knew nothing about what the pilot planned to do.
The video shown on news TV made this look like a buzzing of the tower. I'm glad to see that the tower video shows the pilot didn't make the turn until he was at the tower. It also seems that the tower was aware of what was about to occur. As an aside, when I lived in Crystal City overlooking Washington National (DCA), I would see a go-around about once a month and with the aircraft (wheels up) and some were last second and close enough to be able to see passengers in the windows. I recall an article in the newspaper that stated go-arounds were fairly common at DCA. This video illustrates the congestion and proximity of tall buildings to DCA:
