Is that a runway ? Is it the good one ?

These questions look silly to you, don't they ?

You would then be surprised by the number of pilots who approached and / or landing to a wrong runway, a taxiway, a runway at an other airport, or a nearby bridge or motorway.

This could look silly, but it's not always so obvious to identify a runway when taxing at night, especially when it's raining and light is creating tons of reflections...

One business jet pilot once told me about a taxi clearance he got from Brussells ground controller after vacating the runway... it involved about 10 different taxiways !!

One of the latest avionics development concerns runway incursion warning system, based on GPS signals which are accurate enough to know if the place is on a runway or a taxiway.

There is a urban legend about this in Frankfurt, where the controllers are known to be expecting pilots to taxi from runway to their gate on their own, which is quite hard on such a complex airport. The story tells that a british pilot, who converted to airline pilot after world war II did land there... the following dialog then took place:
Controller: Speedbird 1234, taxi to gate 45 via standard taxi route
Speedbird 1234: Sorry Sir, we're not familliar with the airport, request detailled taxi clearance.
Controller (a bit pissy): Speedbird 1234, did you never come to Frankfurt before ?
Speedbird 1234 (with british flegm): Yes Sir, I did, but did not stop and dropped things over
The legend don't says anything about the controller's answer.

You may be noticed big number painted on runways, to identify them. These come from runway angle with respect to magnetic north, rounded by 10 degrees. So a runway 23 has a magnetical orientation between 225 and 235 degrees. This is also why the numbers at each end are different, and always different by 18 !

So, what about parallel runways ? Dialog between pilot and controller must be unambiguous. When an airport has several parallel runways, they are then designated by their number, followed by L (left) or R (right). So if an airport has two runway with an orientation of 70° with respect to magnetic north, they will be 07L and 07R, and in the other direction 25R and 07L respectively.

Final trick, if an airport has 3 parallel runways, the center one will be designated 07C (center).

One note before I stop this already too long post (I told you I'm passionated about that). To be able to operate runways completely independently, that is to be sure there is no influence of traffic on one regarding traffic to the other, their centerlines must be 700 meters apart.

PS: if you see in a movie with Leo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks (Catch me if you can) a plane being cleared to land on runway 59, you'll know that it's not correct !