New and notes from around the interweb:

• Top 20 airline companies by number of seats flown by this measure American Airlines is still number one and interestingly China Southern is larger than United.

  

• Will the new A321XLR be good – or bad – for passenger comfort, flying long distance flights with a single aisle aircraft (as the Boeing 757 often does today)? It depends on the airline and what they do with it.

  The XLR “is a fuel efficient narrow-body that won’t need to carry as many passengers to make a route economical. That opens more nonstop flights to more destinations,” says Gary Leff, an aviation expert who pens the View from the Wing blog. That’s good news for passengers, he says, but only if airlines make the most of their limited interior space. “Airlines flying these aircraft will have to put in better seats, offer more passenger room, and better entertainment,” Leff says. As for the widely held belief that passengers simply prefer to fly a twin-aisle wide-body for that feeling of space, Leff says “larger aircraft are often pitched as potentially having better amenities, but in the end usually just wind up with more seats.”

• TSA is testing facial recognition at security checkpoints in Las Vegas

• Southwest’s flight attendants union is mad at the airline for sharing a video with employees detailing what’s being offered for a new contract. Unions prefer to be the sole conduit of information to their members for contract negotiation issues.

  The airline is proposing a choice of a 3% annual raise or 2.5% raise and $2000 signing bonus, along with changes to the reserve system.

• Azul says they won’t join Star Alliance

• Pretty cool time lapse video of LAX from the folks at The Points Guy.

• The latest version of Midwest Airlines says they’re launching and announced their first routes. They’d like to fly “between Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; and Cincinnati, Ohio” and for service to start before end of year.