Sources & corrections

The rule: no uncited guidance

In plain terms: if we can't point at the regulation, we don't publish the claim.

Every milestone, deadline, reference fact and calculator in WheelsUp is grounded in a primary source we hold on file — the statute, the DoD instruction, the service regulation, or the official rate table itself. Not a news article about the rule, not another site's summary of it, and not a model's memory of it: the issuing document.

The rule cuts in a direction most content policies don't: when we can't source something, we leave it out — even when it is probably true and would be convenient to include. Example: it is widely repeated that myPay access ends about 13 months after separation. We could not stage an authoritative document stating it, so no WheelsUp milestone says it. The gap is deliberate, and this policy is why it exists.

Where the sources live

In plain terms: a library of more than 350 primary documents, filed by who issued them, with searchable extracts and retrieval dates.

Behind the product sits a maintained library of more than 350 source documents, organized by issuing authority: DoD instructions and manuals; Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard regulations (Space Force falls under the Department of the Air Force); the U.S. Code; VA statutes, the CFR and current VA rate tables; TSP, DFAS pay tables, OPM rules, the Joint Travel Regulations; and statute-level extracts for the state benefits of all 50 states.

Each source keeps a searchable full-text extract alongside the original, with a header recording where and when it was retrieved — so a citation can be traced from the sentence you read on a tool page back to the paragraph of the regulation that states it.

How it is enforced

In plain terms: an automated check reads every citation in the product and fails the release if the cited document isn't on file.

A policy that lives in a style guide is a hope. Ours runs as code, before every release:

Every statute cited in the product must resolve to a document in the library. An automated check reads the citations out of the branch content and off every calculator page, then looks for the cited section's full text on file. A citation with nothing behind it fails the build — the release does not ship.
The check runs in both directions. A calculator that stops displaying its sources fails, and a new tool that ships without declaring them fails. The surface being checked is derived from the code, not from a hand-kept list — so a page added next month is covered the day it lands.
Known-dead figures are pinned. Some wrong numbers are so widely repeated that we test for their absence: if one reappears anywhere in our content, the release fails (see the next section for why).

These checks exist because we made the mistakes they catch. More than once, a check has stopped a citation of the wrong section of the right law — written in good faith, plausible, and incorrect — before it reached you.

Per-branch citations

In plain terms: six branches, six sets of regulations — cited separately, because they genuinely differ.

Transition rules are mostly service regulations, not federal ones — and the services disagree with each other on real, consequential points: which transcript system covers you, where your retirement application actually goes, what order your terminal leave and permissive TDY may run in. WheelsUp maintains a separate content pack per branch, each cited to that service's own instructions, and our tests verify the packs differ where the regulations differ — so one branch's rule cannot quietly leak into another's plan.

Where a rule is federal and identical for everyone, it is cited once to the federal source — we do not manufacture branch flavor that the law does not have.

When the source itself misleads

In plain terms: some official texts contain expired or repealed provisions that read as current. We flag them and test against them.

Reading the primary source is necessary but not sufficient — some primary sources carry traps, and part of this policy is recording them so they cannot bite:

A COVID-era regulation extended the VGLI life-insurance conversion windows, and the longer numbers still sit in the current CFR text — reading exactly like a more generous rule — even though they expired for anything received after December 11, 2021. Quoting them would tell a separating member they have 90 more days of insurability than they do. Our source extract carries the warning, and our tests fail if the dead numbers appear in any content pack.
A pre-2022 statute gave certain combat veterans five years of VA health-care enrollment; the PACT Act made it ten. The five-year figure is still repeated across the internet. It is pinned as a forbidden number in our tests.
Statutory dollar amounts for VA housing grants are indexed annually and have been higher than the printed statute since 2009 — so our content states the rule and deliberately no dollar figure, and a test asserts none appears.

When we find a trap like this, the warning goes into the source extract's header and, where possible, into an automated check — not into a session note that gets forgotten.

When we update

In plain terms: annually for rates and tables, immediately for corrections, and when the regulations themselves change.

Annual rate refresh. Military basic pay tables (each January's raise) and VA compensation rates (each December's COLA adjustment) are refreshed when DFAS and the VA publish them. Calculators state the year of the tables they use, and our build fails from the day a published table is superseded — so a stale rate stops the release rather than reaching you.
Event-driven updates. When a regulation we cite is reissued or a statute is amended, the affected content is updated against the new text — not against reporting about it.
Release notes. App changes ship with release notes (the "What's New" panel in the planner). Guides carry a "Last updated" date.

Report an error

In plain terms: if a date, figure or rule is wrong, tell us — a real person replies within 2 business days, and verified errors get fixed and noted.

Citations are the product here. If you believe a date, dollar figure, or rule in WheelsUp is wrong — or a citation doesn't say what we claim it says — report it, and tell us where you saw it and, if you can, what the correct source says.

We aim to reply within 2 business days — the same commitment we publish on our support and status pages. A verified factual error in a deadline or a dollar amount is the most serious defect this product can have, and it goes to the front of the queue: we correct the content, update the page's "Last updated" date, and where the error was material, say so in the release notes rather than fixing it silently.

If we get a correction report wrong — the reported error was real and we said it wasn't — that is worth an escalation: say so in a reply and a person will re-check it against the source, not against our previous answer.

What this does not make us

In plain terms: rigorous sourcing is not official guidance, and it is not advice.

WheelsUp is not affiliated with the Department of Defense, any military service, or the VA. Citing a regulation accurately does not make us its issuing authority, and it does not make our estimates official figures. Regulations change, individual circumstances differ, and the offices that decide your case are your finance office, your personnel section, and the VA — verify with them before acting. This policy is about holding our side of that line: when you check our numbers against the source, the source should say what we said it says.