Aircraft Operations Center

The Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) is the main aircraft base for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States government, under the operation of the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps.

AOC houses 10 NOAA aircraft, including the Hurricane Hunters.

This base plays a large role every hurricane season, supporting NOAA flights in and around tropical cyclones for research and forecasting.

The AOC resided at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, from January 1993 to June 2017.

[1] NOAA operates a fleet of ten crewed aircraft:

NOAA's two Lockheed WP-3D Orion aircraft along with a De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter (foreground) and a Beechcraft King Air inside the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center hangar in Lakeland, Florida.