FAAM Airborne Laboratory

[2] Work carried out by FAAM includes FAAM is staffed by a mixture of NERC, University of Leeds and Met Office personnel, and acts as a servant to numerous UK and occasionally overseas science organisations; primarily the Met Office itself, or UK universities funded by NERC.

It flies around 400 hours annually, most commonly on large campaigns where a team of typically 30 will spend around a month at a base location, potentially anywhere in the world, delivering a specific science campaign, although some flying from Cranfield also takes place.

An emergency response role exists, which has been used three times - at the 2005 Buncefield fire, the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption and 2012 Total Elgin gas platform leak: after Eyjafjallajökull a new aircraft, MOCCA - the Met Office Civil Contingency Aircraft, has been commissioned as the "first responder" to British volcanic ash emergencies.

The facility was originally established in 2001, with an intended operating base of the BAe site at Woodford, in Cheshire.

Guy Gratton, an aeronautical engineer; it is now headed by Mr Alan Woolley, an instrumentation scientist.