News notes from around the interweb:

• Data: How bad is American Airlines premium cabin award availability?

• United reducing the number of business class seats on Boeing 787-8s. The 787=8s will focus on leisure routes, and still offer more than the paltry 20 business seats American puts on its 787-8s.

  While United decided to retain the 787-9’s original 48 business seat count post-retrofit, the 787-8s will see a decrease from the original 36 business seats (Collins Aerospace Diamond) to a retrofitted 28 with Polaris (based on Safran Seats’ Optima), representing United’s smallest widebody Polaris cabin – even smaller than its Boeing 767-300 with 30 Polaris seats (the High-J 767 has 46 Polaris seats).

  This reduction contrasts to the US major’s stated overall plan to grow premium capacity. United will offer 20% more business class seats to Europe in the first half of 2020 than the prior year. It expects Polaris to be on all of its 777-200ERs from May, and for Polaris to be on 90% of United’s widebodies, including all 777s and 767-300s, by the end of 2020.

  

• LAX lit their pylons purple.

• Here’s Kobe talking about why he took helicopters.

  View this post on Instagram

  TSR Staff: Thembi! @ThembiTV_ _____________________________________ #TSRTakeAMoment: Yesterday the world took a huge loss when #KobeBryant’s untimely passing was announced. As we’ve previously reported, Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other victims passed away in a helicopter crash. _____________________________________ A clip from a 2018 podcast interview Kobe Bryant did with #AlexRodriguez for The Corp With A-Rod and Big Cat has resurfaced. In that interview, Kobe explains why he chose to travel locally using helicopters. The main reason was because he wanted to spend time with his family. _____________________________________ "Traffic started getting really, really bad," Kobe said during the podcast. "I was sitting in traffic and I wound up missing like a school play because I was sitting in traffic." _____________________________________ "This thing just kept mounting, and I had to figure out a way that I could still train and focus on the craft but still not compromise family time," he continued.—click the link in our bio to watch the full interview

  A post shared by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Jan 27, 2020 at 1:21pm PST

• Leslie Gillin, who told me 18 months ago to expect 5/24 to expand across the rewards card portfolio, has been promoted from President of Co-Brand Cards to become Chase’s new Chief Marketing Officer.

  

• St. Louis airport privatization is dead walking away from about $1.2 billion in revenue from a long term lease.

• The Delta Upcycle Project (HT: Paul H.)