I'm not sure I understand. What does it matter that their IT systems make it feasible for them to offer lacto-ovo and other variations if in practice they only make standard and vegan?

The large pre-selection also covers religious options, Kosher, Halal, etc. IT is a huge deal because it makes up front handling cost negligible and much more reliable. Sorry, but vegan covers all veterinarian options so that makes total sense. Otherwise, they'd have to offer 6 different 'veg' options to cover just my family.

The thing is that they do offer six (well, usually four) different vegn options. I agree completely that vegan satisfies all the vegn options, but then why offer the others at all? Vegan also covers halal, kosher, Buddhist, and usually also gluten-free, etc., but if you order any of those, you will not normally get a vegan meal, but a specifically halal, kosher, etc. one. If they wanted to cut down and limit, they could just give everyone who ordered special-request meals the vegan option, but they don't do that.

@JanusBahsJacquet It's because 6 is far less than 12. 4, 5, 6 has been determined to be a manageable number of variations that covers the most passenger requirements. Market conditions also dictate the menu on many flights, Kosher being much more important on European routes than Asian routes. Kosher is not veg, neither is halal. Vegan for all veg variations, Gluten free, a local variation. That's already 6 choices.

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the actual question here. If 4–6 is the manageable number, and the number that they actually make, the why do they offer 12 to begin with? There's no real need for them to offer lacto-ovo, but they still do—why? The fact that halal and kosher are not veg is not an argument; lacto-ovo isn't vegan either. Vegan is both kosher and halal, so they could give that and be perfectly within reason; there's no requirement that a halal or kosher meal must contain meat.

@JanusBahsJacquet Seem you are ignoring your own questions. Vegetarian meals are nearly always vegan when flying—why?: Because they cover all variations of veg. So why do airlines always...conflate all vegn options into the fully vegan option on the flight*: Vegan covers nearly every dietary scenario, including religious, so it makes sense as a backup choice on board.

@JanusBahsJacquet They can offer 50 choices on the ground because they can actually accommodate that *on the ground*.

The question is two-fold. Both parts of the question are integral. I understand why airlines offer a variety of dietary options; that in itself makes sense from a customer service perspective. I understand why airlines want to cut costs and reduce the number of variations they have to buy; that makes sense from a business perspective. Both those things are taken as the ‘prelims’ to the main question, which is why the two are not in sync. You've only addressed the prelims here, rather than the main question.

@JanusBahsJacquet Those are the only two questions in your post. Both answered. I don't see a third question anywhere. There are no conflicts here, you're way overthinking this. Ordering and catering 50 choices is relatively easy on the ground because the IT systems make ordering, matching and delivering all the way to the seat possible. In the air, after all customization opportunities have passed, a vegan meal can be served to essentially everyone. They many not like it, but won't go hungry. It is that simple.

I've edited to clarify more precisely what the crux of the question is. I thought I had made it fairly clear that the two part-questions were easily answered individually but not compatible with reality in combination; obviously that wasn't clear enough, since several people seem to have misunderstood my intention.

@JanusBahsJacquet Thanks, but it doesn't change my Answer one bit. It's still the difference between on the ground and in the air capability. I don't think the question was really misunderstood, please, accept the correct answers even though they differ from what you may expect.

I don't really see how on-the-ground capacity has anything to do with it. The food is booked to go on the plane—as you say, IT systems make that fairly easy nowadays—so the plane capacity is the same as the on-the-ground capability. They have exactly the meals that were ordered by the airline, no more, no less (except through human error, which is quite rare in my experience). But those meals don't correspond to the ones that were ordered by the passengers. If they can order the meal on the ground, they can bring the meal on the plane. If that's not true, could you explain how it's not true?

If we were talking about people asking on the plane, after they're already in the air (or just less than the 24-hour cutoff before departure) if they can have a vegetarian meal, then I could see how ground vs. air capabilities would be relevant (though they usually don't have any extra vegan meals either—they have no extra meals); but we’re talking here about meals that have been booked directly with the airline weeks before the flight.

@JanusBahsJacquet Then you have a misconception on how catering works. ~24hrs ahead of time, the order is transmitted from the airline to the caterer which includes the count of every required meal based on expected load and pre-selections. Only what is ordered is catered. The exact meal is what is determined weeks in advance (chicken, beef, potatoes, etc.). The count of each is ordered per flight.

I'm aware of that. Consider this: I call the airline and pre-select/order/book a veg meal three weeks before my flight, and the airline asks me whether I want VGML, VLML, VRML, or VOML. I say I want VLML. Then, a priori, I would expect a VLML meal to have been pre-selected, and I would expect that VLML to be included when the combined catering order is transmitted ~24h before departure, as a VLML order. In reality, it never is. When I get the food on the flight, it is invariably VGML.

@JanusBahsJacquet Then you are further confusing the premium and non-premium catering experience. In the premium cabins, you are basically choosing an exact dish from a menu, like a restaurant. In the main cabin, you are requesting a meal that meets the specific requirement, not the specific dish. So, the Kosher meal might end up beef or lamb, whatever the Kosher selection for that month is. Meaning, the pax chooses Kosher, not beef or lamb. In your case, again, the vegan dish covers all veg sub types. It is that simple.

I understand that they use VGML to cover all the veg options (and a few others)—that much is clear. I don’t understand why they make a point of asking me to choose between options that all yield the same result when booking. It’s like ordering chips and being asked what kind of sauce you’d like with your chips, but no matter what sauce you say you want, they always give you ketchup. If you only have ketchup, don’t ask me to choose. A few airlines do in fact say that their veg option is VGML so that’s what they’ll order—fine. That makes sense. Asking me to choose doesn’t.

@JanusBahsJacquet It's because in some markets, India for example, it can make a numerically meaningful difference in catering and customer experience to offer actual differences in the veg options. Spain, not so much.

I would add that concern about different catering for different markets to your answer.

@JanusBahsJacquet To be clear, vegan does not also cover kosher. An Orthodox Jew served a non-Kosher-certified vegan meal would pretty much only be able to eat any of the fruits or vegetables that had been neither cooked nor cut nor coated with any kind of dressing.

@JanusBahsJacquet They're not asking you to choose which meal to receive, they're asking you to choose which dietary requirements you have. They list the options they do because they are dietary requirements that people have. Then, a completely separate process that has nothing to do with how your request got in there does the best it can to meet your requirements

@Rish I stand corrected. I am not very familiar with the requirements of kosherness; having just read up a bit on it, I see your point. It seems some very traditionalist orthodox Jews may even require all food preparation to be done by Jews for the food to be considered kosher, in which case even a glass of water on the plane would not be kosher (unless the person who bottled it in the factory and the flight attendant who poured it into the glass were both Jews).

But those are presumably a very small minority, similar to how no-pluck raw fruitarians (people who eat only raw fruit which has fallen off its stem by itself) are a very small minority within the panoply of veg*n variations.