How to Fill Out and Submit DD Form 2768: Military Airlift Request

DD Form 2768 is the Department of Defense’s Military Airlift Request, the form a traveler or unit uses to ask for passenger or cargo transportation on a military aircraft. To get it approved, you fill in accurate itinerary, passenger, and cargo data, justify why commercial air won’t meet the mission, collect signatures from both the requester and the senior traveling passenger, and route the completed form to the senior traveler’s airlift validation office within your service’s lead-time window.¹ From there, a validator prioritizes the request and passes it to a scheduling activity for final aircraft assignment.

Who Can Request Military Airlift

Eligibility is set by DOD Instruction 4515.13.² The main categories:

Active-duty service members on PCS, TDY, TAD, or funded emergency leave.
Reserve Component members traveling to perform inactive duty for training or active duty for training, with or without pay.
DOD civilian employees on official PCS, TDY, or TAD orders, or on rest and recuperation or environmental morale leave.
Command-sponsored dependents on PCS orders, emergency leave, evacuation orders, or environmental morale leave.
Non-command-sponsored dependents in limited circumstances, such as when a sponsor could obtain emergency leave or when dependents were acquired during an overseas tour.
Other executive branch agency personnel when commercial transportation can’t meet mission requirements, typically on a reimbursable basis.

Every request must serve an official purpose, and DOD Directive 4500.09 requires the most cost-effective commercial option to be used whenever it can meet the requirement.³ That’s why the form asks you to justify why commercial travel isn’t feasible.

Where to Get the Current Form

Download DD Form 2768 from the DOD Executive Services Directorate at esd.whs.mil, in the DD Forms 2500–2999 section.⁴ Save the PDF and open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader; the fillable fields often don’t behave in a browser. The current edition date is March 1998, with the PDF itself updated as recently as July 2025.⁵ Trips with multiple destinations need a separate DD Form 2768 completed and validated for each leg.¹

How to Complete Each Section

The form gathers what a scheduler needs to match your requirement to an available aircraft. Work through it in order.

Itinerary

Enter departure and arrival locations as four-letter International Civil Aviation Organization codes, not the three-letter commercial airport codes.¹ Fill in desired departure and arrival dates, and note any flexibility. Schedulers use flexibility to consolidate missions.

Passenger Information

Enter the total passenger count and provide a manifest with names, ranks, and any special needs in transit. List the senior traveler’s name and rank separately, since validation runs through that person’s chain of command. Flag medical or mobility requirements so the scheduling activity can pick an appropriate aircraft configuration.

Points of Contact

You must provide 24-hour contact information for both a departure coordinator and an arrival coordinator, and they must be two different people.¹ Name a preferred request coordinator with grade, duty phone, after-hours phone, and email. Schedulers call these people when flights are delayed, diverted, or cancelled, and missing or outdated contact information is one of the most common reasons requests get denied outright.⁶

Cargo Information

For cargo, describe each item and enter dimensions of the largest item, weight of the heaviest item, total weight, and total cubic feet.⁵ Note any special handling. Arrange cargo acceptors and handlers at the destination airfield before submitting; the aircrew is not responsible for offloading your equipment.

Mark whether the shipment includes hazardous materials. If it does, AFMAN 24-604 governs preparation and certification of hazmat on military aircraft, and violations by military personnel are punishable under Article 92 of the UCMJ.⁷

Commercial Cost Comparison

Enter commercial transportation cost, hotel cost, per diem, cost per passenger, and total cost.¹ Use GSA city-pair fares or the lowest available full coach fare, plus lodging and per diem if commercial travel would require an overnight stay.⁸ The actual side-by-side comparison is done by the scheduling activity, but they work from the numbers you enter.

Justification and Remarks

Use the remarks block to explain, in specifics, why commercial air can’t meet the mission. Vague language like “operational necessity” gives the validator nothing to work with. Concrete reasons carry the request: equipment too large for commercial aircraft, no commercial service to the destination, classified materials requiring secure transport, or a timeline commercial scheduling can’t meet.

Signatures

Both the requester and the senior traveling passenger must sign. Requests missing either signature are returned without action.⁶

Where to Submit It

Route the completed form to the senior traveler’s airlift validation office.¹ The specific office varies by service and command; your unit’s transportation office or operations section can identify the right validator. Some organizations process requests electronically through the Single Mobility System, the DOD’s web-based tool for tracking airlift requirements.⁹ Navy units typically submit through the Joint Air Logistics Information System or by emailing the form to the Navy Air Logistics Office operations desk.¹⁰ The validation office retains the form for three years from the date of validation.

What Happens After You Submit

A validator confirms eligibility and operational alignment, then assigns one of three priority levels:

Priority 1: forces engaged in combat, contingency, or peacekeeping operations directed by national command authority, or lifesaving missions.
Priority 2: required-use travel or situations where compelling operational considerations make commercial transportation unacceptable.
Priority 3: official business validated as more cost-effective than commercial, or official travel consolidated on already-scheduled missions.

These validation-level priorities are separate from the broader DOD Transportation Movement Priority System under CJCSI 4120.02F, which ranks missions across all transportation modes.¹¹ After validation, the request goes to a scheduling activity, typically at the component command level or through U.S. Transportation Command for strategic airlift. Once the flight is manifested you receive a unique mission number, which is the official authorization for the party to board and cargo to load.

When to Submit

There’s no single DOD-wide deadline; lead times depend on mission type, passenger count, and which service or component handles scheduling. Air National Guard Operational Support Airlift illustrates the range:

CONUS flights with eight or fewer passengers: submit at least 7 days before the desired travel date.
CONUS flights with nine or more passengers: at least 14 days prior.
OCONUS flights: at least 45 days prior. Active component requesters must have a completed and validated DD Form 2768 to the scheduling office no later than 30 days before departure.

Requests submitted inside these windows are either automatically downgraded in priority or denied. Any request received within 30 days of the mission date for ANG Mission Readiness Airlift, for example, isn’t accepted at all.⁶ Confirm exact lead times with your transportation office, and submit early.

Why Requests Get Denied

Most denials come from avoidable errors. Check these before you walk the form to validation:

Missing signatures. Both the requester and the senior traveling passenger must sign.
Missing or wrong contact information. No 24-hour phone number, no mission.
Incomplete or inaccurate data. Cargo dimensions that don’t match, wrong ICAO codes, or blank fields all trigger denial.
Missed submission deadlines. Late requests are denied regardless of justification.
Non-compliance with applicable DOD transportation directives.

A denied form has to be corrected and resubmitted, which can push the mission past the scheduling window entirely.⁶

International Flights Need Separate Clearance

DD Form 2768 doesn’t handle diplomatic clearances. Missions that enter international airspace, overfly foreign territory, or land at non-U.S. airfields fall under the DOD Foreign Clearance Program, which requires both U.S. government and foreign national government clearances processed separately through your command’s foreign clearance channels.¹² Certain countries and regions are designated as “special areas” needing additional clearance coordinated through the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the State Department. Overflight permissions and landing rights can take weeks, so factor that into your submission timing when the itinerary has international legs.

1
Department of Defense. DD Form 2768 Military Airlift Request
2
Department of Defense. DoD Instruction 4515.13 – Air Transportation Eligibility
3
Department of Defense. DoD Directive 4500.09 – Transportation and Traffic Management
4
Washington Headquarters Services. DD Forms 2500-2999
5
Washington Headquarters Services. DD Form 2768 Military Airlift Request
6
Air National Guard. ANGI 10-201 – AFRC Flying Operations
7
Air Force E-Publishing. AFMAN 24-604 Preparing Hazardous Materials for Military Air Shipments
8
Department of Defense. DoDI 4500.56 – Use of Government Aircraft and Air Travel
9
Air Force Reserve Command. AFRCI 11-201 – AFRC Flying Operations
10
Commander, Naval Air Forces. Airlift Requests
11
Joint Chiefs of Staff. CJCSI 4120.02F – Department of Defense Transportation Movement Priority System
12
Department of Defense. DoD Foreign Clearance Program