In Southeast Asia, the main low-cost carrier is AirAsia with 54 airplanes and some 2'500 flights a week.
This upstart airline has carried over 30 million passengers; more than Singapore Airlines.
AirAsia flies to 80 destinations in South East Asia.
However they are planning to establish intercontinental route.
This is definitely the cheapest way to flight in this region of the world.
In Australia, the main airplane companies are Quantas, Jetstar and Virgin Blue.
In others states you can find smaller group such as Kendall for New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland; Hazelton for NSW; Sunstate in Queensland or Skywest in WA.
Jetstar and Virgin Blue seem to be cheaper than Quantas.
But as précised before, they don't offer any meals or additional services during the flight.
However, you can purchase food and drinks in the flight for a reasonable price.
Sometimes Blue Virgin is Cheaper and sometimes is Jetstar.
It all depends on the route and date you want to fly.
The main advantage of JetStar is that you can check-in your seat online.
However they open their check-in counter only 2 hours before the departure time.
It seems that you can check-in at any time with Blue Virgin during the same day of departure.
It can be a really advantage when you have a long transit time.
For all low-cost carriers company, you would prefer to reserve your ticket quiet in advance as they are full booked most of the time.
However, if you have a very flexible schedule, you can wait the last moment to take advantage of the last minutes cheap tickets offers.
If you want to travel from South East Asia to Australia, it is more difficult to find cheap fight tickets.
VirginBlue and AirAsia do not fly between most of these countries.
JetStar covers much more country in South East Asia than Blue Virgin; however they are quiet expensive compare to local flight or AirAsia.
The reason is that the flights taxes to get in or get out of Australia are very high; almost the price of the ticket itself.
So in this case, you won't find really big differences between low-cost carrier and standard airlines such as Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines or Garuda.