Originally Posted by
EEngr
And color vision at low light intensity suffers as well. Lighting/marking systems need to be based on patterns more than colors particularly at night.
Haven't heard this suggested, but some people's color vision is better than others - perhaps in this case, the pilot's color vision wasn't quite 100%?
Not sure when these pilots started their day, whether they would have been up and/or flying during daylight hours? I don't usually have a problem driving at night, but if I've been driving all day in the sun, then I have trouble seeing after it gets dark.
From a distance, could the lights on the planes have drowned out the green center line lights, and seeing the lights, the assumption was made that those were the runway lights? As someone said, once fixated on the idea that "that's the runway" it could be hard to rethink that.