Hawaii-based Airlines - Question redeeming HA miles with Virgin Atlantic

In another thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18989821-post273.html), someone stated:

"You would pay a very large cash outlay on the VS flight redemption on your planned route due to the YQ Virgin charges. "

What does this "cash outlay" mean? I thought that if you redeem award miles, you only have to pay the tax for the flight.

Virgin Atlantic has very high fuel and other surcharges added onto reward flights, several-many hundreds of dollars. However, these surcharges are only for flights on Virgin Atlantic metal.

Partner flights do not have these fees. A reward flight on Hawaiian using Virgin Atlantic miles should cost you about $5-10 per ticket.

The question in the other thread was regarding the opposite redemption: using HA miles on VS, preferably Upper Class.

The speculation is that there would be no YQ because Hawaiian won't charge it on a partner flight. But no one in that thread had actually completed such a redemption, so no one could really prove it.

FWIW, this recent blog article seems to indicate that one would not pay fuel surcharges...

http://milevalue.com/redeem-for-virgin-atlantic-upper-class-without-surcharges/

Has anyone successfully redeemed HA miles on Virgin Atlantic?

The fly anywhere for 70,000 miles has me intrigued. Is there ever any availability to either Asia, Australia, Africa, Middle East, or Europe?

That would make HA miles far more valuable then the Hilton transfers I have been using them for. Perhaps I haven't searched hard enough, but i'm surprised there isn't more discussion on this redemption option.

I attempted to make a mock booking with HA on VS (for science!) in May but the agent was unable to find any SFO-LHR availability for september, october, or november. None at all. The process was slow but I probably should have attempted to pre-verify VS availability on a particular route by using their website. Not sure if VS releases all award space or just some to HA. I am agreed that if this is possible, using HA on VS becomes very attractive (because of the 2x35K cc offers from BoA)

Sorry to revive an old thread but what sites do you look for space?
And also has anyone verified that there aren't surcharges?