Southwest Airlines’ planned layoff of more than 100 workers is directly tied to its Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) withdrawal, primarily because it is a relatively small workforce story with a significantly larger strategic meaning. The cuts show how aggressively the airline is pruning weaker parts of its overall network as it doubled down on services to and from Chicago Midway Airport (MDW), where it has far greater scale and a much longer operational history.