Southwest is the largest airline at the airport. They were allocated 44 daily departures for 2023, down from 57 flights in 2022. Basically the airport guesses how full flights will be, and applies that percentage to back into the current 11.8 million allowable passengers. And that determines how many flights they’ll permit.
Apparently they’ve been filling too many seats, because Southwest Airlines let employees know that they have a problem to manage in Orange County.