Fears that packed mixed-mode runways at Heathrow will put lives in danger have increased with reports of another near miss.

On July 28 at 6.58pm a Virgin flight from New York came in to land from the East on Heathrow's northern runway at the same time as a British Airways flight was taking off from the southern runway.

Although this is normal practice the Virgin flight failed to land and carried on climbing, cutting across the path of the BA plane and forcing the pilots to swing out of each other's way in a so-called 'go-around', leaving only a 20 second gap.

Tom Beaton, of Church Street, in Isleworth, saw the BA flight directly above his home, as it flew off track, alerting him to something being amiss.

He worries that this event raises serious questions about the proposed use of mixed mode, the government's planned method of increasing capacity at Heathrow, that would mean using both of the airport's runways for take-offs and landings simultaneously.

Tom said: "It is clear from events like this, that the physical capacity of the airspace in the immediate vicinity of Heathrow has already been reached.

"This event was dangerously close to a disaster. The idea that you can have more planes landing and taking off simultaneously is a notion that comes from people who are so driven by profit, that their normal human and moral judgement has deserted them."

"I know that NATS will say this is a routine procedure, although when there are four planes involved as there may be in the near future, I just can't see how they are going to avoid crashes."

The scare comes just three weeks after a Brentford travel writer contacted the Chronicle after their plane had to suddenly abort landing at Heathrow because of busy runways.

NATS, National Aerospace Technology Strategy, provide air traffic control services to all aircraft flying in UK airspace and they have said the incident was just a routine 'go around', and is a regular occurrence which all controllers are fully prepared for. A spokesperson for NATS said: "At that time there was no safety issue at all as far as we are concerned."

BAA say that mixed mode could potentially deliver an extra 15% runway capacity at Heathrow by around 2015, allowing up to 540,000 flights per year, compared with today's limit of 480,000, with economic benefits of 2.5 billion a year.