Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2401 — DD Form 2401, Civil Aircraft Landing Permit, January 2008 — was established to Civil Aircraft Landing Permit, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 2 pages and asks for approximately 65 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
The xfdl file is a survival from an earlier phase of Defense form automation. Xfdl is the IBM Lotus Forms format, and for a long period it was the Department's standard for electronic forms — fielded broadly enough that it still appears in distribution sets today. It opens in IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or a compatible client and nowhere else; a pdf reader will report it as damaged, which is not a fault in the file.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
What the form asks for
- 1. User. a. Name.
- 1.b. Relationship to parent organization (if any).
- 1.c. Address (street, city, state and zip code).
- 2. Name of airfield(s) to be used.
- 3. Are pilots instrument rated and current? Press space bar to mark X in first box if yes, second box if no.
- 4. Purpose of use.
- f. Equipment. (1) 2-way radio. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (2) Strobe warning lights. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (3) Transponder. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (4) IFR capabilities. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 5. Aircraft data. a. Manufacture, line 1.
- 5.b. Model.
- 5.c. Registration number.
- 5.d. Capacity. (1) Crew.
- 5.d.(2) Passenger.
- 5.e. Maximum gross takeoff weight (pounds).
- f. (1) 2-way radio. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (2) Strobe warning lights. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (4) IFR capabilities. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (3) Transponder. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 5.a. Manufacture, line 2.
- 5.b. Model.
- 5.c. Registration number.
- 5.d. (2) Crew capacity.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2401?
- DD Form 2401, Civil Aircraft Landing Permit, January 2008
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?