When you say use the points as cash you mean use the Reserve 50% bonus?
Then again Chase is limited to Expedia when booking a Cash ticket so look on studentuniverse momondo Skyscanner Priceline kayak and all the other sites when booking a Cash ticket or on the airline site directly before jumping onto Expedia meaning Chase to book your cash fare ticket.
You can also use a site called awardhacker.com to price out how much it would cost to use your points to book a ticket,it's an amazing site. It shows you which airlines fly and for how much, but you have to do your homework and plug in the dates into that airlines website, some of them you need to create an account and see if there's any availability and once you find out if there's availability you have to see how long the transfer time is to transfer your points from one program,sometimes you might find availability but it takes you three days to transfer your points by the time you have your points good chance that availability will be gone.
That site Believe it or Not tells you if it will transfer instantly or will take a few days.
Most time with chase its instant but then again there are sometimes where it will take a few days.
In general it's usually not worth to use your points to book an economy ticket, unless you find a good deal. Where flying business / first is where the value of your points stem.
And as usual you can always try to search a HC ticket to see if there is any available tickets.
Good luck..