Walking across the tarmac towards a crowd of spectators after completing an exhilarating spin in one of the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Spitfires, Flt Lt Antony “Parky” Parkinson was greeted by an onlooker: “You've got a dream job, haven't you?”

“I had to agree,” he said. “I'd spent a couple of hours in the morning flying a Typhoon [Eurofighter] and then took off in the Spitfire on a gloriously warm summer evening. You can't get better than that.”

Flt Lt Parkinson, 43, is one of those rare individuals who made up his mind as a child what he wanted to do in life and remained so single-minded that his parents never had any doubt that their son would be an RAF fighter pilot.

Today, he is what the RAF call a “professional aviator”, one of those who decide to stay in the cockpit rather than go for promotion and end up flying a desk in Whitehall or taking command of a remote air station.

He is one of the RAF's most experienced fast jet pilots, not only flying the latest combat aircraft but also training others to master the technological complexities that make the Typhoon one of the most powerful and agile military jets in the world.

Dream jobs, however, come at a price. It took Flt Lt Parkinson years of hard work and dedication to reach the position he is in today and, as one of the chosen pilots to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes at public displays, many of his weekends are taken up with professional commitments. “I think my wife, Ann, has seen enough air shows,” he said.

Based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and attached to 29 Squadron, FltLt Parkinson, a father of four with children aged from two to sixteen, has flown everything from Hawk training jets to Phantoms, Tornado F3s, American F16s (during a secondment with the United States Air Force) and the Typhoon. He was among the first dozen RAF fast-jet pilots to switch from Tornado to Typhoon. Not surprisingly, perhaps, he also spent four years as one of the Red Arrow display team pilots.

“I was never going to do an office job, although even as a fighter pilot I still have to spend some time in an office, involved in planning for flights and taking part in debriefings afterwards, but I fully expect to remain a professional aviator until I'm 55,” he said.

That would complete a 50-year love affair with flying, inspired by the first air show that he attended with his parents. “I was taken up in an old biplane and that did it for me,” he said.

His enthusiasm for flying was given a boost by his school in Hastings, East Sussex. He joined the Air Cadets at William Park School and won a flying scholarship before he took his A levels.

He joined the RAF in December 1983 and trained at Cranwell. There was already a flyer in the family: his grandfather - Horace “Rayce” Parkinson - flew DH5 biplanes in the First World War with the Royal Flying Corps, the precursor of the RAF.

During a professional flying career that has spanned a quarter of a century, his role, on some days at least, is eerily familiar. As a Phantom pilot based at RAF Leuchars in Fife, Scotland, in the Cold War, he was scrambled to intercept and chase away Russia's long-range Tupolev TU-95 Bear bombers flying close to British airspace. Now Typhoons serve the same function of protecting Britain's airspace and one of the quick-reaction units is based at Coningsby.

“I've intercepted six Bears; four in a Phantom and two in a Typhoon, with a 20-year gap in between; it's like Groundhog Day,” he said. “I feel really privileged that I'm now flying the Typhoon, which is a quantum leap in terms of performance and technology compared with the Tornado, yet also able to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes, and I can tell you it's more difficult to land a Spitfire than it is a Typhoon,” he said.

“But the core skills of being a fighter pilot are essentially the same for Spitfires as they are for the Typhoon, with the key thing being professional confidence.” A skill, one suspects, that flying shares with other, perhaps less thrilling, careers.

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