Crashing on takeoff... how odd

Matt Whiting wrote:



I certainly always appreciate when ATC catches a mistake that I make or
am about to make, but as PIC the bottom line is that it is still my
responsibility for any errors, not ATC's.

Jets take a long time to take off so if he used the wrong runway the
question will certainly arise as to what the tower controller was
looking at. My guess is the coffee pot. The controller would have had
about 1 minute after issuing the clearance to notice that he was using
the wrong runway. And looking at the airport diagram this would be an
area well known to controllers for aircraft using the wrong runway. We
have one here at BIL. Ask for a certain intersection and don't turn all
the way onto the runway and you are using the last 700 feet of another
runway. We've had one crash, one near crash and a bunch of aborts from
pilots who weren't paying attention.