Most gas turbine engines in service use a prefilming airblast atomizer in combination with strong swirling flow. An experimental investigation of the characteristics of a hollow cone prefilming airblast atomizer in a strong swirling air flow Is presented in this paper. The measured quantities include the spray cone angle by planar imaging, patternation using planar laser-Induced fluorescence, planar droplet velocity field using two-component particle image velocimetry, and droplet size and velocity distributions using a phase Doppler particle-size analyzer and laser Doppler velocimetry. Patternation of the spray field showed regions of high droplet concentration and volume flux fluctuations in various cross-sectional planes. The investigation revealed the presence of droplets of narrow size range up to 25 μ around the axis of the atomizer in the central toroidal recirculation zone of the swirler. The presence of vortical structures entraining the droplets is observed from the instantaneous velocity vector fields. The velocity data shows entralnment of the droplets in the central toroidal recirculation zone. Examining the size and the velocity data reveals that the centrifugal action of the swirling air flowfleld from the atomizer carries the bigger droplets outward, toward the periphery of the spray.