> The 17 runways are quite separated laterally so it’s more probable that he was wrongly going for the 17L thinking he was aiming for the correct runway.
This is the diagram for a different airport (Denver International, KDEN). The accident happened at Centennial Airport (KAPA), where the two runways are only separated by about 700 feet.
17R is shorter and narrower than 17L. If the pilot mistook 17R for a taxiway, it would have been a mirror-image situation to the relatively recent one at SFO, were an airliner was making its approach to a taxiway.
