Bethune described a siuation similar to this in his Worst to First book. Two flights landed incorrectly, one ignored their landing configuration warning and ended up putting the plane down on its belly. The other was flown to the wrong airport which was close to the intended airport and had very similar runway layouts. Only the pilots in the former scenario were punished since the second was an 'honset mistake' using all available information.
I can tell you from a pilots perspective that in congested areas like Newark it's not always easy to pick out the runway. As mentioned earlier, runway 29 does not have an ILS system, so at night the pilots must rely exclusivley on their vision to line the plane with the runway. Having said that, there is no excuse for the pilot(s) to skip out on notification.