A FORMER Royal Air Force pilot who flew the Royal family to far flung destinations has been reunited with the planes he clocked up thousands of miles in.

Thomas Jackson of Boscombe Village enlisted to the RAF in 1942 during the Second World War and was immediately recruited to take the helm, but he never expected to sit in the exact planes he flew in more than 40 years later.

The 95-year-old left the air force in 1977 and on Friday he clambered back into the captain’s seat of two of his former aircraft.

The de Havilland Comet and the Hawker Siddeley Andover are now stationed at the Boscombe Down Aviation Collection, at Old Sarum, to Thomas’s delight.

The aircraft were tracked down by Thomas’s granddaughter Katie Coleman, who is a flight operations manager at RAF Marham, after she began reading his flight records.

“I was looking at my grandfather’s records as my flight lieutenant was interested and I searched the numbers of the aeroplanes and was amazed that the exact ones were at the museum,” said Katie.

After getting in contact with the museum, Thomas was joined by four generations of his family including Katie, great-grandson Thomas, daughter Nicola and son-in-law Roy Coleman.

Thomas said: “It was very nostalgic to sit in both of the planes as there are a lot of memories in them.”

The shell of Comet flown by Thomas was bought by the museum from the RAF in 2014 for £1 and since then it has been refurbished to create a replica interior to how it would have been when the plane was in the air.

Great-grandfather Thomas was first introduced to the aircraft at RAF Lyneham when he joined the 216 Squadron.

“We were just given the aeroplane and we had to learn it ourselves, which was unusual as there is normally someone that has gone before you, but we were the first,” the seasoned pilot said.

“We were able to fly the aeroplane at our own speed and at our own terms which was one of my best periods in the air force.”

After getting to grips with flying the Comet in England, Thomas took on 10 days of extensive training in the desert in Libya.

However, the majority of Thomas’ career was spent flying members of the Royal family for state visits in far flung destinations such as Africa and South America.

He was lucky enough to fly the Queen, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and other Royals on numerous trips.

On one journey, Thomas recalls, while the Queen was in the cockpit, he showed her some modifications that had been made to the plane.

“She said to me ‘oh yes I have seen this’ which I felt a bit deflated about but she had seen it on a previous flight.

“She knows quite a bit about flying does our Queen.

“She is an extremely nice lady and was always very appreciative.”

But following his retirement from the RAF Thomas has been sworn to secrecy about the majority of what took place on the flights.

On many occasions Thomas would be involved transporting the Royals from city to city during visits.

“The shortest trip we did was in Canada from Kingston to Ottawa which was about 25 minutes in the air.”

But Thomas says that one of his most memorable times in the RAF was when he had to bring a plane back after it was unable to continue its journey.

“We took off from Singapore at 7.30 in the morning, we had breakfast, lunch and tea in three different countries and we were back in Lyneham before the bar closed. We were flying for 23 hours.”

Thomas was also involved in the first flight travelling East to West, from England to America.

During his time in the RAF Thomas was awarded with the Victorian Order for his service to the Queen and the Air Force Cross for his years of dedication.

The aviation collection’s visitors’ manager Norman Hibberd said: “It was brilliant, absolutely superb to have Thomas here. It was great to have someone here who actually flew two of the aircraft we have here rather than a test pilot.”