[mosheroperandi]

Yeah, but once you decide that the leftmost runway you see (with the dark void on its left) is the left runway, then obviously the parallel strip of lights to the right of it is the right runway. Sure, the lights look odd, and your gut's giving off this feeling, but you see, that's the left runway, and I don't see the right runway anywhere else, so this must be the...

They probably got stuck in several cycles of that before the contrary evidence was overwhelming enough to break them out of their off-by-one mental model.

[dsfyu404ed]

Yup. Humans are very good at fitting information into what they already know about a situation even if it doesn't fit perfectly.

[tajen]

Can you see the X at the beginning of the runway while sitting in the pilot seat? I was told the pilots' eyes are expected to be at mid-windshield height, but pilots prefer their seats in slightly reclined position and no position is compulsory.

[dmurray]

It's meant to be seen when approaching the disabled runway, not as a generic landmark to help the pilots orient themselves. So it's not prominently visible when approaching the taxiway.

[phkahler]

>> Can you see the X at the beginning of the runway while sitting in the pilot seat?

On approach you should be looking at the threshold and the numbers. That's right around where the X was, so it would be clearly visible to anyone trying to land on the closed runway. They were not trying to land on that one, and since they were over the taxiway the X was actually two "lanes" away from where they were. I don't think the X is terribly relevant to what happened here.