Editorial Policy

1. Editorial standards overview

Volata exists to help travellers redeem frequent flyer points well. That mission only works if the rate data, the comparisons, and Captain Byron's recommendations are trustworthy. This page explains how we maintain that trust: where the data comes from, how we audit it, how we correct mistakes, and how we keep affiliate relationships from bending what we tell you.

Our overarching commitment: honest uncertainty is better than false precision. A disclaimer-backed estimate is more trustworthy than a confident misleading number. Surfaces that claim more confidence than the underlying data supports are treated as defects, not features.

2. How rates are sourced

All rate data on Volata lives in a single authoritative database (award_chart_entries) with explicit provenance for every row.

• Primary sources: airline award charts (e.g. qantas.com Classic Reward tables), program partner pages, and direct booking-flow verification where access is available.
• Cross-verification: rates are verified against multiple independent aggregators (Point Hacks, Australian Frequent Flyer, AwardWallet, AwardFares, UpgradedPoints) where the primary source is ambiguous or rate language is contested.
• Per-row metadata: every row carries a last_verified date and notes documenting the specific source citation (commit references where the rate was added or updated).
• No fabrication:rates are never copied from an LLM's recall, casual inspection, or unverified aggregator claim. If a rate cannot be cross-verified against an authoritative source, it is not encoded.

3. Audit cadence

The Volata rate database is audited under a multi-program audit framework codified through 14 sessions of structured data-quality work. Highlights of the audit discipline:

• Stale-rate threshold:rates older than 12 months trigger mandatory re-verification before any remediation action. Empirical calibration showed older encoding has roughly 150× the defect density of recent encoding — staleness is the dominant structural risk to accuracy.
• Per-program audits: each of 11 non-Qantas programs (Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways, Korean Air, ANA, JAL, Singapore Airlines, BA, EK, EY, Alaska, Virgin Australia) was audited row-by-row against fresh source verification.
• Self-flagging operational concerns: rows that depend on operational state (a specific aircraft type, a specific route configuration) are flagged with explicit operational-availability notes so users know what could change.
• Active deferrals registry: known unresolved items (e.g., partial Premium Economy coverage on Emirates where source access is limited) are tracked publicly with explicit re-engagement triggers, not buried.

Periodic re-audits run on a rolling basis. New audit cycles kick off when a major chart revision is announced, when a partnership materially changes, or when a row crosses the 12-month stale-rate threshold.

4. Correction policy

If you find a rate, comparison, or recommendation that looks wrong:

• Email us: send the route, program, cabin, and the rate you saw to hello@pointspilotapp.com. A short note about how you verified it (e.g. "qantas.com booking search on 12 May for SYD-LHR Business returned X points") helps us re-verify quickly.
• Verification: we re-verify against the primary source and at least one aggregator before publishing a correction.
• Visibility:material corrections are noted in our weekly newsletter (when shipped) and reflected in the row's last_verified date and notes immediately on update.
• No silent fixes on user-facing pages:we will not retro-edit Captain Byron's historical replies or programmatic page snapshots without flagging the change.

5. AI-generated content disclosure

Captain Byron is an AI assistant. Byron produces conversational recommendations using the verified rate database as authoritative source data. Important caveats:

• Verify before booking:Byron's numeric rate citations are based on the most recent last_verifieddata. Rates may change without notice. Always re-verify against the airline's booking flow before transferring points or making a booking.
• No real-time availability:Byron does not have access to real-time flight availability, partner inventory, or your specific booking class. Live availability must be checked via the airline's site or a search tool like seats.aero.
• Hallucination risk: like any LLM, Byron can occasionally produce confident-sounding wrong answers, especially for queries outside the encoded rate database. We are actively investing in structural anti-hallucination infrastructure (post-response verifier; reference-citation cross-check) and will surface improvements as they ship.
• Three-layer disclaimer: rates are based on published programme rules; programmes may change without notice; actual earnings may vary based on your booking class, route, and program-specific eligibility.

6. Editorial independence

Affiliate relationships do not influence rate accuracy, comparisons, or recommendations. This is structurally enforced, not just a policy statement:

• The rate database does not contain commission information. There is no field, column, or query path that exposes commission rates to comparison or ranking logic.
• Captain Byron's reasoning context contains rate data from the database but does not contain commission data — Byron cannot rank by commission because Byron cannot see commission.
• The cheapest option still wins, even when the cheapest partner has weaker or no affiliate program. If Aeroplan at 87,500 points beats an affiliate-partner program at 100,000 points, we tell you Aeroplan.
• If a competitor product is genuinely better for your use case (e.g., seats.aero for live availability search), we say so. Usefulness is the primary commitment.

For affiliate-partner detail (which partners we have relationships with, commission ranges, disclosure surfaces, refund posture for over-surfacing), see our Affiliate Disclosure.

7. Updates and corrections to this policy

We update this page when audit methodology evolves, when correction-policy mechanics change (e.g., when we ship the public correction-log surface), or when AI-content discipline extends (e.g., when the anti-hallucination verifier ships and changes the "hallucination risk" framing). Material changes are also called out in our newsletter.

8. Contact for editorial concerns

Email hello@pointspilotapp.com with rate corrections, methodology questions, or concerns about Captain Byron's output. We read every message and fix verified errors quickly.