Ok, from an engineer's point of view, I'm asking myself on how to prevent such incidents in the future. The only times I have seen a cockpit of a commercial airliner at night was in simulators (EDDF for example), so I'm trying to imagine.
From what I read here, 29 seems to be used if the crosswind component for a landing on 22 would be too high.
What I think contributed to the problem is that:
-The crew were rather busy with the "wind problem"
-They're coming after sunset
-They're flying a visual approach to runway 29
-So they have to find the runway among thousands of lights (taxiways, the turnpike, whatever). A runway that doesn't even have an ILS (probably because an ILS approach would interfere with KLGA approaches), no touchdown zone lighting and no approach lighting whatsoever.
So why does a runway, that is mostly used in adverse conditions, even lack a simple approach lighting?
SailorOrion