Kind of a general question but I want to make sure I'm thinking about this right. I am planning some extended travel beginning in South East Asia and I've been disappointed with my options to redeem CC points on low-cost carriers on domestic flights and regional flights inside of South East Asia. I'm having similar results looking at redemption options within Europe on some of their low-cost carriers.

The two major problems are that 1) Cheap flights often don't show up on redemption portals for AMEX and Chase(not all carriers are a part of their booking system), leaving only more expensive flights to redeem points with or 2) If I were to transfer points to an airline and redeem using their award availability, there don't seem to be many good options for these shorter haul flights and there is a lot of leg work that goes into searching each airline out to determine cost in miles, availability, fees/taxes, etc.

My question is this: Am I better off in the long run just paying cash/avoiding the hassle of maximizing points for domestic/regional/short haul flights and saving my miles/points to redeem for long haul flights at a better redemption rate? Or should I be using another strategy to book low-cost flights using miles or points?

Pay cash. Flights are often so cheap and that way you can include extras (seat, meal, bag, etc.) easily. Which sometimes is not possible afterwards.

LCCs are a whole breed onto themselves, and run thins their own way. I'd say you are better off just buying an inexpensive ticket, especially in light of how things can get difficult during IrrOps - I would NOT want to go via third party to get to where I'm headed in that case @:-) They may not make you do that, but there have been some horror stories documented in the past, especially if route is not flown daily.

I use points for the long haul to get to a region in business class. Once in region (especially Asia) I normally pay for flights as they are reasonable.

If you were set on using points, you'd want to maximize a distance based award chart since you're flying short haul. That would be Avios. Avios is a transfer partner for Amex and Chase. Amex currently has a transfer bonus going. However, I never used the program and don't know all the nuances.

Same advice for your post on the Chase forums

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase...-carriers.html

I used AMEX travel / points for a round trip on Frontier recently, low base cost ... but then I had to go to the Frontier website and pay $88 each way for 1 carryon + 1 checked bag

Ended up being not really worth it ... the flight with bags included would have been cheaper if I have purchased it all at once upfront on Frontier's website

Consolidated relies to question posted in both American Express and Chase forums because there is likely to be substantial overlap in the replies. Please do not post the same question in more than one forum or thread.