Norwegian Air Rewards Loyalty Program Review

Norwegian Rewards Credit Card

The Norwegian Rewards Card is not like your typical airline credit card — it doesn’t earn redeemable miles, but rather cash-back that you can redeem towards flights with Norwegian Airlines in the form of “CashPoints.”

The Norwegian Rewards Card earns 2% back in CashPoints for purchases with Norwegian, 2% back on dining and grocery purchases, and 1% back on all other purchases.

Other benefits of the Norwegian Rewards Card include priority boarding, no foreign transaction fees, no annual fee, and an anniversary bonus of $100 in CashPoints when you spend $20,000 on the card in a year.

Additional Travel Rewards Cards Options

Seeing that the Norwegian Rewards Card is essentially a cash-back card where the rewards are locked into use with Norwegian, there are many other solid travel rewards cards that are worth considering.

When you are dealing with a program that doesn’t partner with one of the major flexible point transfer programs (e.g. Chase or Amex), it’s important to know what your other options are.

Capital One and Barclays offer credit cards like the Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card, and the Barclaycard Arrival® Plus World Elite Mastercard®, which earn miles that can be redeemed as a statement credit against the cost of a Norwegian flight.

Here’s a list of the best travel rewards cards, with Capital One and Barclays as the banks you want to focus on.

After being approved for one of these card options and meeting the minimum spend requirement, you’ll be on our way to having enough miles for a free flight in no time!

Norwegian Air Shuttle (better known as Norwegian Air) is a low-cost airline with a frequent flyer program called Norwegian Reward.

The airline joins the ranks of Ryanair and easyJet in focusing on high-frequency travel for flights both within and to Europe.

Every time you fly Norwegian, stay at a partner hotel, or drive a partner rental car, you earn CashPoints that can be used to book award flights. CashPoints can also be earned through Norwegian’s other list of non-travel partners.

When the time comes to redeem your CashPoints, they can be used for a full or partial redemption for your next Norwegian flight, extra baggage, seat reservation, cancellation insurance, or booking changes.

Joining Norwegian Reward

Signing up for the Norwegian Air frequent flyer program is free by filling out this online form.

After you sign up, you’ll have the ability to earn and redeem miles not only for Norwegian flights, but also expenses like baggage and seat reservations.

How to Sign in to Your Norwegian Reward Account

Head to the Norwegian Air Rewards login page, where you’ll enter your email/username and password to access your frequent flyer account.

Hot Tip: Award availability can be searched without signing into a Norwegian account since the program uses a revenue-based currency. When searching on the website, it’s important to note that 1 CashPoint = 1 Norwegian Krone (1 NOK = ~$0.11 USD). 

Viewing Your Account Activity

To see the CashPoints that you are earning, you’ll need to log in to your account.

The process to review your CashPoints is easy:

1. Log in to your account
2. Click “Menu” in the top left of the page
3. Click “My Travels”
4. Click “View Transactions”

Points Expiration

CashPoints expire every 24 months at the end of the calendar year in which the CashPoints were earned, unless you’re a Norwegian Rewards Card cardholder, in which case, your CashPoints expire every 48 months, doubling the time you have to make a redemption.

Norwegian Rewards Elite Status

Unlike American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, Norwegian doesn’t have elite status within its award program.

Instead, the program rewards flyers by offering a benefit for every sixth flight you fly.

Here’s how the benefits work:

The first benefit of 2% CashPoints kicks in after you fly 6 Norwegian segments. You have access to additional benefits the more you fly — but for the first 6 segments, Norwegian selects this benefit for you.

After your twelfth segment (i.e., second sixth segment reward), Norwegian lets you select from a broader slate of benefits.

The rewards are as follows:

• 2% CashPoint boost on all LowFare tickets, which can be used 5 times. If you choose this Reward every 6 segments, you will earn a 12% CashPoint boost after 48 segments.
• Free Fast Track on all flights.
• Free seat reservation on all flights.
• Free baggage on all flights (must fly 18 segments to be able to choose this benefit).

If you want to dive deeper into the Norwegian Rewards program, everything you need to know can be found by checking out this page.

If you fly a significant amount of Norwegian segments in 1 calendar year, you may want to consider the Limited Edition Rewards.

With Limited Edition Rewards, you have 2 tiers: Premium and Long Haul.

By flying 10 round-trips (20 segments) on a Flex ticket and you’ll earn a Premium seat upgrade for a flight in the following calendar year.

If you double that with 20 round-trips (40 segments) and earn 3,000 CashPoints, you’ll earn a long-haul ticket for a flight in the following calendar year.

For those who fall into these buckets, more information about Limited Edition Rewards can be found on this page.

Value of Norwegian Rewards Benefits

Norwegian is a low-cost carrier, so it’s important to recognize that the benefits offered will not compare to those of major airlines in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The value of the 6 segment rewards really kicks in when you’re able to select either the Seat Reservation or Baggage benefit.

If you’re buying LowFare domestic and/or long-haul tickets (where a seat assignment and checked bags aren’t included in the cost of your ticket), the Seat Reservation and Baggage benefit can save you some money.

For example, if you’re flying an international long-haul LowFare flight, Norwegian charges $12-$31 for a seat assignment and $90 for a checked bag.

International long-haul includes flights to/from the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Argentina, and Singapore (except flights between U.S./Canada and Caribbean).

Bottom Line: After you’ve flown 12 segments, you’ll earn the ability to waive either the Seat Assignment or Baggage fees, which can save you money on Norwegian Air flights.

Norwegian Air is unique — instead of earning airline miles as you do with most airlines, you earn CashPoints, which are a percentage of the amount you paid for the flight.

CashPoints can be earned not only by flying on Norwegian Air, but also via hotel stays and car rentals.

Earning Points Through Flying

Norwegian awards CashPoints based on the type of fare that you booked.

For LowFare flights, you’ll earn 2%-5% of the revenue cost of the flight in CashPoints. With Flex tickets, you’ll earn 10% CashPoints.

The Norwegian program is part of the Airlines for Europe (A4E) alliance, joining the likes of Air France-KLM and Lufthansa, but there are no reciprocal benefits (e.g., you can’t use Norwegian CashPoints to book a Lufthansa flight).

Bottom Line: Norwegian doesn’t use airline miles as a currency and instead uses CashPoints, which are earned based on a percentage of the revenue cost you paid for the flight.

Earn Points With Credit Cards

Norwegian Rewards Card cardholders can earn additional CashPoints for purchases they make with the card. The Norwegian Rewards Card earns 2% back in CashPoints for purchases with Norwegian, 2% back on dining and grocery purchases, and 1% back on all other purchases.

Norwegian Rewards Card cardholders also receive benefits like priority boarding, no foreign transaction fees, no annual fee, and an anniversary bonus of $100 in CashPoints when you spend $20,000 on the card in a year.

Hot Tip: Earning transferable points with travel rewards credit cards can be a great way to capitalize if you’re flying Norwegian regularly!

Earning Bonus Points in Other Ways

The main way to earn CashPoints is by flying Norwegian regularly either on LowFare or Flex tickets or by using the Norwegian Rewards Card.

However, the frequent flyer program offers additional ways to earn CashPoints. Using its travel, home and lifestyle, and dining and shopping partners, you’ll have no shortage of options to earn CashPoints.

Complimenting your earnings from flying by spending with Norwegian’s partners can help ensure you always have plenty of CashPoints on hand for an award flight.

CashPoints in the Norwegian program are equivalent to cash: you can redeem them for Norwegian flights with no blackout dates and no minimum amount required to use for redemption.

One of the many unique aspects of Norwegian Rewards is that you can use your CashPoints on an array of items including flight tickets (taxes and fees are eligible), extra baggage, seat reservation, cancellation insurance, and booking changes.

Norwegian doesn’t offer business class, but they do sell premium economy tickets on 787 Dreamliner international long-haul flights to/from the U.S., Thailand, Argentina, Singapore, and Caribbean (excluding flights between the U.S. and Caribbean).

Bottom Line: Norwegian is a budget airline offering points that can be great to use on its international long-haul premium economy flights.

Partner Awards

Norwegian is part of the Airlines for Europe (A4E) alliance, but that partnership won’t help you much.

This is because Norwegian and the partners in A4E don’t provide reciprocal benefits like you’ll see with the Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance.

Therefore, if you need benefits across an alliance, you’ll want to look outside of the Norwegian Rewards program.

Booking Online

Norwegian flights will not show up on online travel agency portals like ThankYou Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, and Membership Rewards because the airline doesn’t participate in the systems that load its flights on to a travel portal.

With that said, you can still redeem CashPoints online by logging into your Norwegian account.

It’s important to note that you’ll only see Norwegian flights when you use the airline’s search engine.

Hot Tip: CashPoints is a revenue-based airline currency that has a fixed value (unlike flexible program points where you can receive varying levels of value). 1 CashPoint = 1 Norwegian Krone = ~$0.11 USD.