Attempted take off from access road in Nice at night
 

Found this today :A Portuguese E190 cleared for take off in Nice Rwy 04L mistook the parallel access way ( U) instead of runway , reached 92Kts before being told by ATC to stop.
The lightning was reported to have been working properly.

Never been in Nice by night, is this easy to mix it up at night ? No way in daylight conditions.

When lightening is working properly, it is really nice by night.

That area of the airport is a maze of lights. No excuse but just saying.

Rumour in our Ops Room tonight is that this will turn out to be another example of the perils of ' taking it on the roll ' in a rush to beat the inbound traffic.

Easily done, especially at Nice, to lose situational awareness when you're in a rush - almost did it myself about 20 years ago in Nice until we saw a set of main lights suddenly turn towards us just as we were thought we were ready to launch.

Never took it 'on-the-roll ' again after that night !

Pretty sure taxiway U used to be the old runway - there are warnings about not confusing it with 04L during circling. Didn't someone land on it a while back?

These things happen when in a rush and it shows the importance of always double checking where you are and what you see ahead.

Yes....The new runway was finished in 1978 and anyone circling Nice for the first time could, still, easily mistake 'U' for a parallel runway.

In our case, it was a dirty, wet and windy night and as we were taxying out from the cargo area, we were offered an expedited departure from an intersection ( can't remember which one now ) rather than wait at the hold of what is now 04L for about 15 minutes due to about six or seven inbounds which had been holding while the storm passed over.

The quick change of plan completely threw us situationally as we were searching on our ground charts for the intersection.

Having said all that, we were in an F27 so probably could have got away with it but fortunately the other guy suddenly brought us back to reality and a lesson learned for the rest of my career.