A small surface wave driven source produces plasma at atmospheric pressure. Microwave power at frequency 2.45 GHz is coupled with the source and a discharge is ignited at power levels below 10 W. The coaxial exciter of the surface waves has a length of 10 mm because its dielectric is a high permittivity discharge tube. The plasma source operates as a plasma jet in the case of plasma columns longer than the tube length. The source maintains stable plasma columns over a wide range of neutral gas flow and applied power in continuous and pulse regimes. An additional advantage of this source is the discharge self-ignition. An electron temperature of Te ∼ 1.9 eV and a density of ne ∼ 3.9 × 1014 cm−3 are estimated by the probe diagnostics method. The emission spectra in the wavelength range 200–1000 nm under different experimental conditions are analysed and they prove the applicability of the source for analytical spectroscopy. The dependences of column length, reflected power and plasma parameters on the gas flow and the input power are discussed.