Partner Awards

Reference data: data/partner-awards.json

When recommending award bookings, check this file to verify:

1. The booking program can actually ticket the airline you're recommending
2. Whether the partnership is alliance-based or bilateral
3. Cross-alliance highlights (VA→ANA, Etihad→AA, Alaska→Starlux, etc.)
4. Which credit card currencies can reach the booking program

Cross-Alliance Bookings Are Where the Real Value Hides

The best redemptions often involve booking an airline through a program in a DIFFERENT alliance (or no alliance at all). Always check the cross_alliance_highlights section.

Verification Is Mandatory, Not Optional

When recommending a transfer, ALWAYS verify the transfer path exists in data/transfer-partners.json BEFORE committing to the recommendation. If a user or your own reasoning suggests a transfer path not in the file, verify it before agreeing. The file may be stale, or the path may not exist.

This is a hard gate, not a soft check. Never accept a transfer path at face value.

Reachability Workflow

When checking if a user can actually book an award flight:

1. Identify the operating airline. Star Alliance? oneworld? SkyTeam? Independent?
2. List all programs that can ticket it. Alliance partners + bilateral partners from partner-awards.json.
3. For each program, check direct balance. AwardWallet shows what the user has now.
4. For each program with insufficient balance, check transfer paths. data/transfer-partners.json lists every credit card currency → airline program path with the ratio.
5. Effective balance = direct balance + max transferable in. A user with 16K United miles but 145K Chase UR has 161K effective United miles (UR transfers 1:1 to United).
6. Drop programs that are unreachable. Only compare cpp on options the user can actually book.

Common Failure Modes