I had never previously redeemed miles in the HA program, and I've never flown Virgin. When I initially called HA, it was to complain and then "settle" for an HHonors redemption. When the agent told me it was only 70K for the Virgin tickets, I asked them to check available flights for me. It seems like they're able to tell which flights have award seats, and then "request" them.

I did have considerable trouble actually geting my seats confirmed from the "request" -- the HA agents seem generally incompetent in using the right procedure -- and at one point I called Virgin to see what seats would actually be available. Unlike some other airlines, I found the Virgin agents to be very helpful in guiding me to availability (I basically wanted to confirm that what the HA agents were saying was the availability was the REAL availability -- I had little faith in the HA agents doing anything correctly). I think the HA award seats on Virgin are pulled from the same bucket as Virgin's own award seats. So if there's an online way to check that, it would be very useful. Perhaps some folks more familiar with the Virgin program could help in this regard.