Airline Loyalty Platform
ReactorCX: The Enterprise Airline Loyalty Platform, Built for Codeshare, Alliance, and Co-Brand Complexity
ReactorCX is the enterprise loyalty platform built for codeshare, alliance and co-brand complexity. It runs redeemable miles and elite-qualifying credit as separate currencies, evaluates status on every flight, accrues and settles partner activity from one ledger, and lets business users change earning rules between release cycles. ReactorCX was designed to be changed.
Rule
Co-brand card accrual
v12Partner Funding
100%
Issuer funded
Billing
Billed monthly: miles × contracted rate
Earning
Award miles by card productBonus categories: travel, dining · Tier credit by product, cappedLimits
Cash advances and fees excludedChargebacks reverse the accrual · Requalification window: calendar yearApproved by Loyalty Finance · partner contract reference attached
How this is measured
Count of member records held in live production ReactorCX programs, de-duplicated within each program; not active members. As of 2026-Q3.
How this is measured
Distinct physical sites transacting through ReactorCX integrations, each counted once. As of 2026-Q3.
How this is measured
Count of activities evaluated by the ReactorCX rules engine across all production tenants in the trailing 12 months. As of 2026-Q3.
How this is measured
Number of SafeSwitch production cutovers completed and the number completed with zero member-visible downtime. As of 2026-Q3.
Platform-wide figures across the ReactorCX platform, not airline-specific.
The constraint is no longer what marketing can imagine.
It is what the platform can execute between release cycles. The programs have evolved faster than the platforms beneath them, and the gap shows up in the worst places: the change request that waits a year, the migration measured in years, the promotion that ships on the platform's schedule instead of the market's.
| What the program needs to do | What that requires of the platform |
|---|---|
| Real-time recognition across app, web, kiosk, airport, onboard, partner airline and card spend | An API-first core that is genuinely event-driven, not batch-first with a real-time veneer |
| Hundreds of overlapping promotions with deterministic, conflict-free ordering | A deterministic rule engine where every outcome is predictable, ordered and logged |
| Distance, price or segment earning tracks in parallel, switchable annually without a rebuild | Business-user configuration of earn types and promotions, not code changes that wait on a development cycle |
| Partner accrual and settlement across dozens of airline, hotel, rental car and card issuer partners | Self-service partner onboarding and automated reconciliation through FeedXChange |
| Codeshare and alliance tier recognition without manual adjudication | Brand-specific and roll-up tiers with tier credit from revenue, distance, segments, partner or card spend |
| Mid-year program changes between release cycles | Regression-free release cadence and batch-loading automation for codes and partner data |
| Regulator-grade audit trails on every earn, burn, tier change and devaluation | Zero unplanned downtime as a baseline backed by architecture, not heroics |
How ReactorCX runs the mechanics of an airline program
Every mechanic below maps to a documented platform concept. The documentation is public, so an architect can verify each row without a sales call.
| Airline mechanic | How ReactorCX runs it | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Redeemable miles vs elite-qualifying credit | Separate currencies with their own purses: redeemable miles, qualifying miles, qualifying segments, qualifying revenue. One flown segment accrues to each in a single evaluation, with independent expiry and annual reset. | Currencies, purses and sub-balances |
| Elite qualification, soft landing, status match | Tier rules evaluate on every activity and on a schedule. Thresholds can combine tracks; downgrades can step one level; a status match is a tier action with its own audit entry and review period. | Tiers and tier evaluation · Tier evaluation flow |
| Alliance, codeshare and joint-venture earning | Marketing carrier, operating carrier, fare class and booking code are fields on the activity, so earning tables and tier credit rules can key on any combination without custom code. | Rules and eligibility |
| Partner accrual: hotels, car rental, dining, retail, co-brand card | Each partner has a wallet and funding terms. Activity arrives through the API or as FeedXChange files, accrues with the partner as funding source, and settlement is calculated from that lineage. | Partners and funding · Settlement flow |
| Award redemption and mixed payment | Burn allocation with a configurable order (oldest first, promotional first, tagged lots), split payment across purses, and an eligibility preview so the app can show what a member can afford before they commit. | Redemption and burn allocation |
| Retro credit, refunds and cancellations | Reversals unwind the original accrual by lineage, including any tier credit and promotion it triggered, and leave both entries in the execution log. | Reversal flow |
| Expiry, activity-based extension and escrow | Expiry is a property of each accrual: hard expiry, extension on activity, tier-based exemption or none, by currency and segment. Escrowed accruals (for example a pending partner posting) vest on confirmation. | Accruals, vesting and expiry · Expiry and escrow flow |
| Family pooling and linked accounts | Householding and linked accounts are member-state constructs, so pooled balances, shared benefits and per-member qualification can coexist. | Member and Member State |
| Route promotions, targeted challenges, streaks | Promotions are arbitrated deterministically when several apply to one flight; challenges and streaks are first-class objects with progress tracked per member. | Promotions and arbitration · Gamification objects |
What happens to one flown segment
One activity, evaluated once, with every downstream effect recorded and published.
Flown
Departure control confirms the segment: marketing and operating carrier, fare class, booking code, PNR, ticket
Evaluated
One activity through the rules engine: earning table, promotions, partner and alliance rules, all in deterministic order
Accrued
Redeemable miles to one purse; qualifying miles, segments and revenue to theirs; each with source, expiry and lineage
Tier checked
Thresholds re-evaluated across tracks; a crossing writes a tier change with its reason
Recorded
Execution log stores what ran, why and who approved the rules; liability moves by the accrued amount
Published
Business events to CRM, messaging and the warehouse; ledger export to finance
See this run on a copy of your own flown and partner activity.
See a parallel migrationThe detail your team will want to check
Expand what you need.
The whole journeyBefore, during and after the flightMost of a member's loyalty moments happen before departure and after landing. ReactorCX is in all of them, through the same rules, the same purses and the same ledger, in whichever integration mode the moment needs.
Earn preview, offers and awards in the booking flow
The booking engine asks ReactorCX what a fare earns, which offers this member qualifies for, and what a flight or an ancillary costs in miles or in miles plus cash. Redemptions are held at booking and confirmed at ticketing.
Status recognised, disruption handled
Check-in, gate and lounge read status and entitlements from the member record. A rebooking keeps the earn promised at purchase, and goodwill miles go out under policy with an explanation and an audit entry.
Cancellations, refunds, partners and retro claims
A cancellation reverses or reprices the redemption from the original record. Refunds return the original currency mix. Partner activity posts to the same balance, and a missing-credit claim is validated against the flown record.
| Moment | What the member sees | What ReactorCX does | Integration mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search and fare display | What this fare earns in miles and tier credit, before they choose | Quotes earn against the live earning tables for fare class, route, partner and status; nothing accrues yet | Real-time API |
| Booking offers | Targeted upgrade, seat, bag and partner offers in the flow | Evaluates eligibility and arbitrates offers by segment, status and rules; reserves the offer when accepted | Real-time API |
| Award and mixed payment | A flight or ancillary priced in miles, or miles plus cash | Quotes the redemption from the burn policy, holds it at booking, confirms it at ticketing, releases it if the booking lapses; a change is repriced in miles from the same purse | Real-time API |
| Day of travel | Status at check-in, gate and lounge; airport purchases earn immediately | Serves status and entitlements from the member record; evaluates airport purchases as activities | Real-time API and events |
| Disruption | A rebooking keeps the earn they were promised; goodwill miles arrive with a reason | Rebooked segments inherit the original earn basis; goodwill accruals run under policy with approval and audit | Events and API |
| Flown | Miles and tier credit post after the flight | Evaluates the flown segment once, as traced above | Batch from departure control, or events |
| Cancellation and refund | Miles back to the purse, cash back to the card, tier credit adjusted | Reverses or reprices the redemption from the original record; refunds in the original currency mix; partial cancellations reverse only the affected segments | API or batch, from ticketing |
| Partner activity | Hotel nights, car days, card spend and dining on the same balance | Evaluates partner files or real-time calls as activities; bills the partner wallet at the contracted rate | Batch file or real-time API, per partner |
| Retro claims and adjustments | Missing credit claimed in the app; an agent adjusts with a reason | Validates the claim against the flown record; adjustments within authority, approval beyond it, all in the audit trail | Member Care Portal and API |
| Expiry and requalification | Warnings before expiry; status renewed or soft-landed | Emits expiry events per accrual lot; evaluates requalification across tracks at period end | Events |
Departure control, ticketing and alliance files are covered in the PSS, departure control and ticketing guide and the alliance and interline partners guide.
Every row reads and writes the same member record and the same ledger. The mode is a choice per system, not per program. Detail in the integration model and the reversal and cancellation reference flow.
ReactorCX speaks the airline data modelOne activity record, every dimension an airline tracksAirline activity is more varied than any other vertical's. ReactorCX holds it in one extensible record, so every earn type stays searchable and actionable across every…
Airline activity is more varied than any other vertical's. ReactorCX holds it in one extensible record, so every earn type stays searchable and actionable across every connected system. Extensions propagate automatically across the UI, API, data warehouse and reporting. Business users configure new earn types. No data migration.
Data model documentation
Core activity
Member ID · type · date · channel · value
Location and itinerary
Origin · destination · operating and marketing carrier · ticket · PNR · codeshare and interline indicators
Product and onboard
Fare class · booking code · cabin · revenue or non-revenue · upgrade · seat · baggage · onboard spend · Wi-Fi
Partner and tier credit source
Hotel nights · car days · card spend · dining · portal · tier credit by revenue, distance, segments, partner, card
Promotions and mechanicsThe promotions an airline program actually runsWhat airline programs chase: Trip frequency, share of wallet among multi-airline travellers, premium-cabin and ancillary spend, co-brand card acquisition and spend, partner earn, and direct booking over third-party channels. These are the mechanics they run most, in the program's own words, and what each one is underneath.
| What the program calls it | Example | What the engine runs it as | Funded by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fare-class earning tables | Miles on the base fare, more in premium cabins, the same on marketing and operating carrier | Earn incentive | Airline |
| Elite status on several tracks | Qualify on miles, segments or spend in the same year; annual requalification; soft landing | Threshold reward, structural | Airline |
| Partner and co-brand earn | Hotel nights, car days, card spend and shopping-portal purchases post as miles at contracted rates | Partner offer | Partner, billed per mile |
| Companion benefit at a threshold | A named companion travels on the member's bookings once qualifying activity in the year crosses the gate | Threshold reward with an entitlement | Airline |
| Route and segment challenges | Fly a set of routes or segments in a quarter for bonus miles; status challenges for new-to-program flyers | Engagement goal | Airline |
| Upgrades and priority services | Cabin upgrades, priority boarding, lounge access and seat selection, gated by status and constrained by inventory | Entitlement benefit | Airline |
| Win-back after a lapse | Bonus miles or a fare credit to a member who has not flown in a defined period, once, with retention measured afterwards | Behaviour-triggered offer | Airline |
Structurally unique to airline programs
Two things exist almost nowhere else. Qualification counted on segments, miles and spend at the same time, so a short-haul commuter and a long-haul premium flyer can both reach status. And a companion benefit that names a beneficiary with its own rules, which the engine runs as a threshold reward whose payout is an entitlement rather than a currency.
All eleven mechanics, the eight dimensions they are configured on, and how funding, stacking and caps work are on the Loyalty and Promotions page.
Partners in hours, not weeks
An airline program runs on dozens or hundreds of partners: hotels, car rental, card issuers, retail, dining, telecom. Each arrives with its own file format, its own schedule and its own settlement terms. Once the agreement, the connectivity and a sample file are in hand, the feed itself is hours of configuration rather than weeks of development. The prerequisites belong to the partner; the platform work is a template.
A feed is configuration
FeedXChange™ holds the format, field mapping, validation, schedule, security and monitoring for each partner. A business user sets up a new partner from that template, and every row that arrives runs through the same real-time rules engine as a live transaction.
Batch first, real-time when ready
Partners keep the nightly file they already produce. When a partner wants instant posting, the same rules serve the REST API and the event streams, so moving a partner from batch to real time is a connection change, not a rebuild.
Settled from the same ledger
Every partner accrual carries the partner, the rate and the contract reference, so the monthly partner statement and the airline's liability come from the same lineage and agree without a true-up.
| Mode | Typical partner | What it needs | When activity posts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batch file through FeedXChange™ | Hotel chains, car rental, retail and dining partners | A file in the agreed format on a schedule; mapping and validation configured once | On the schedule, each row evaluated in real time on arrival |
| Real-time API | Co-brand card issuer, ancillary vendors, alliance partners | A call per transaction with the member and the activity | Immediately, with the response returned to the partner |
| Alliance and interline files | Partner carriers | Two-way flown-segment files on the alliance schedule; billing by fare class; rejects and disputes returned in the file | On the schedule, each segment evaluated on arrival |
| Event stream | Internal systems, CDP, messaging, warehouse | A subscription to Level 1 and Level 2 events | As they happen |
Partner feeds and settlement are documented in the FeedXChange integration guide, the alliance and interline partners guide and the partners and funding concept.
How ReactorCX fits an airline estate
Reservations, departure control, the app and partner feeds arrive as activities.
ReactorCX keeps qualifying and non-qualifying miles apart, evaluates elite tiers on every flight, and records partner accruals with their funding source so settlement and mileage liability come from the same lineage.
Nothing here replaces a system you already run. Airlines channels keep their own systems of record; ReactorCX holds the loyalty state, and publishes what it decides back to them.
The capabilities an airline program actually runs on
Membership and lifecycle
- Unified member profile across brands and channels
- Brand-specific and overarching roll-up tiers
- Householding and linked accounts
- Member merge and unmerge
- Dynamic segmentation synced across the stack
Earn and redeem engine
- Cross-brand earning at the transaction level
- Multiple currencies and point purses per brand
- Rewards catalog with locked-item logic
- Co-brand card earn on a single instance
- Mixed-basket resolution at the line-item level
Offer and promo management
- Category multipliers and cross-brand challenges
- Personalized catalogs by tier and eligibility
- Referral programs with hurdle-based rules
- Streaks, badges and progressive reward chains
- Hundreds of concurrent promotions resolved without conflict
Partner ecosystem
- Co-brand card settlement and attribution
- Vendor-funded offer management and reconciliation
- Brand and partner rewards
- Self-service partner onboarding via FeedXChange
- External partner earn and burn in real time
Customer data and insights
- Prebuilt engagement and liability dashboards
- Promotion performance with control-group testing
- Full SQL access and custom extracts
- Cross-brand earn-pattern analysis
- Federation with your existing data warehouse
Governance and security
- Deterministic, audit-logged rule execution
- Role-based access with brand isolation
- SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001:2022
- Multi-brand financial attribution
- Zero-PII deployment option
Mileage liability that reconciles.
Miles are a liability. Partner accruals are receivables. Both come from the same ledger.
Every accrual carries its source (a flown segment, a partner posting, card spend), its currency, brand, partner, timestamp and expiry. Liability reports by track and by partner without allocation rules, because the allocation happened when the mile was earned. Co-brand and partner settlement runs from the same lineage, so the receivable and the liability never drift apart. Devaluations, expiry sweeps and status matches are ledger entries with a reason and an approver, in a format that holds up to an auditor.
Breakage is not estimated. Expired value is written when it expires, with the original source, so finance can reconcile the program instead of modelling it.
Switch without losing a year.
Airline programs are coupled to the passenger service system, the departure control system, a co-brand issuer and dozens of partners, which is why replacements are measured in years and why most airlines postpone them. SafeSwitch™ changes the shape of the risk. ReactorCX is stood up in parallel with the live program, receives the same flown, partner and card activity, and is reconciled against the legacy system across the whole member base before any member moves. The legacy program stays live until the airline confirms, and rollback is a routing change.
ThreadSync™ runs the integrations as parallel threads, one specialist team each, so the PSS, departure control, partner feeds and card issuer work proceed at the same time rather than in sequence.
Safe Migration · Migration documentation · Migration Hub
What an airline migration has to carry across
- Redeemable balances by lot, with original earn dates and expiry
- Qualifying credit year to date, on every track, plus lifetime status
- Elite status, soft-landing history and pending status matches
- Partner and co-brand balances, receivables and unsettled postings
- Award holds, pending redemptions and refund reversals in flight
- Family pools and linked accounts
- Historical flown activity, so retro-credit claims resolve after cutover
- Downstream feeds to CRM, messaging, the warehouse and finance
Each item is reconciled in the parallel run before cutover. Detail in the data migration documentation.
Bring your earning tracks, your partners and your point-of-sale reality. We stand it up in parallel, you validate it against today, and then you decide.
Get a migration readiness assessmentWhat each airline stakeholder will want to check
- Loyalty and marketingCan we change earning rules, launch a route promotion and target a challenge without a release?Marketer Experience · Loyalty & Promotions
- Technology and architectureHow does it integrate with the PSS, departure control and partners, and what is the event model?Integration guides · Event catalog · Architecture
- FinanceHow is mileage liability recorded, how is partner settlement calculated, how is breakage computed?Financial Integrity · Ledger and lineage
- TransformationHow do we replace the platform without a big bang?Safe Migration · Migration Readiness Assessment
- Security and procurementWhich attestations, which controls, what stays out of the platform?Trust Center · Security Pack
Frequently asked questions
What is the best loyalty platform for airlines?
ReactorCX, the enterprise loyalty platform from Loyalty Methods, is built for what makes airline loyalty hard: a program that changes faster than its own release cycle, across codeshares, joint ventures, alliance partners and a co-brand card. It recognizes members in real time across app, web, kiosk, airport, onboard, partner airline and card spend, runs hundreds of concurrent promotions with deterministic ordering, and lets business users configure new earn types and promotions in a UI rather than as release-cycle code.
Can ReactorCX run multiple simultaneous earning tracks, such as distance, revenue and segments?
Yes. ReactorCX qualifies members on multiple simultaneous earning tracks, including distance, price and segments, and those tracks can be switched annually. It supports multiple currencies and point purses per brand, cross-brand earning at the transaction level, and tier credit drawn from revenue, distance, segment count, partner credit or card spend.
How does ReactorCX keep redeemable miles separate from elite-qualifying credit?
Redeemable miles and each qualifying track are separate currencies with their own purses. A flown segment can accrue redeemable miles, qualifying miles, qualifying segments and qualifying revenue in one evaluation, each with its own rules, expiry and reset schedule, and each reported separately for liability and tier purposes.
How does ReactorCX handle tier recognition across codeshare, joint-venture and alliance travel?
ReactorCX manages tier recognition across codeshare, joint-venture and alliance travel, with brand-specific tiers and overarching roll-up tiers. Tier credit can be sourced from revenue, distance, segment count, partner credit or card spend, so a member's status reflects the full relationship across the airline and its partners rather than a single earn type.
How are partner accruals from hotels, car rental and co-brand cards settled?
Each partner has its own wallet and funding terms. Partner activity arrives in real time through the API or as files through FeedXChange, accrues to the member with the partner recorded as the funding source, and settlement is calculated from that lineage rather than from a separate reconciliation process.
How does mileage expiry work in ReactorCX?
Expiry is a property of each accrual, so a program can run hard expiry, activity-based extension, tier-based exemption or no expiry, by currency and by member segment. Expiring balances raise warning events for communications, and expired value is written to the ledger with its original source, so breakage is computed from lineage rather than estimated.
Can members earn and redeem miles inside the booking flow?
Yes. The earn quote, award pricing, miles-plus-cash and ancillary redemption all run on the real-time API, so the booking engine can show what a fare earns before purchase and price flights and ancillaries in miles. Redemptions are held at booking and confirmed at ticketing.
What happens to miles when a flight is cancelled, refunded or rebooked?
A cancellation reverses or reprices the redemption from the original record. Refunds return the original currency mix, miles to the purse and cash to the card. A rebooking keeps the earn promised at purchase. Partial changes affect only the segments involved, and every adjustment is in the audit trail.
How long does it take to onboard a new partner?
Hours rather than weeks. A partner feed is configured in FeedXChange™ with its format, mapping, validation, schedule and security, and each row runs through the same real-time rules engine as a live transaction. The partner can move to the real-time API or the event stream later without rework.
How does an airline migrate a legacy loyalty program without downtime?
SafeSwitch stands up a full production environment in parallel with the live program, feeds it the same flown, partner and card activity, reconciles balances, qualifying credit, elite status and partner positions across the whole member base, and cuts over with zero member-visible disruption. The legacy program stays live until the airline confirms.
See an airline program run on ReactorCX.
Bring your earning tables, partners and tier rules. We will show the same flown segment evaluated, accrued, tier-checked and published, and how a parallel run proves it before you switch.