Narrative:

The weather was clear with calm wind in lebanon; nh. While briefing the arrival; I elected to choose LNAV GPS to runway 7 because of the surrounding mountainous terrain and night time. During the descent; ATC offered the visual which I declined and I continued with flying the full approach. While inside the final approach fix at akhom; the PNF asked me to offset visually from the approach in order to line up with the runway. I replied that I will remain on the LNAV approach until short final because of the elevated terrain on the north side.I then realized that he was looking at downtown lebanon which was very bright and had two crossing main boulevards that looked like runways with yellow light. Then the lebanon airport appeared at 12:30; very faint with red edge light. The bottom line of this incident; if I had listened to the PNF by leaving the approach path and lining up with a city boulevard at night; it could have caused a missed approach or even worse.two points to remember: 1) never accept a visual approach on a mountainous or unusual airport at night; and 2) request and follow the full approach until minimums; and then positively identify the runway in sight before switching to visual cues.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CE750 First Officer reports being cleared for the RNAV RWY 7 at LEB during night VMC. Inside AKHOM the Captain asks the pilot flying (PF) to offset from the approach to line up with the runway and the PF declines due to terrain. Upon descending further it is determined that what appeared to be the airport is actually the lights of downtown Lebanon.

Narrative: The weather was clear with calm wind in Lebanon; NH. While briefing the arrival; I elected to choose LNAV GPS to Runway 7 because of the surrounding mountainous terrain and night time. During the descent; ATC offered the visual which I declined and I continued with flying the full approach. While inside the final approach fix at AKHOM; the PNF asked me to offset visually from the approach in order to line up with the runway. I replied that I will remain on the LNAV approach until short final because of the elevated terrain on the north side.I then realized that he was looking at downtown Lebanon which was very bright and had two crossing main boulevards that looked like runways with yellow light. Then the Lebanon airport appeared at 12:30; very faint with red edge light. The bottom line of this incident; if I had listened to the PNF by leaving the approach path and lining up with a city boulevard at night; it could have caused a missed approach or even worse.Two points to remember: 1) never accept a visual approach on a mountainous or unusual airport at night; and 2) request and follow the full approach until minimums; and then positively identify the runway in sight before switching to visual cues.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.