Originally Posted by seacarl

While I once assumed that the reason for the cutoff is that AS adjusts the catering for the flight based on the preorders, it doesn't. The number of entrees is fixed, and once the preorder limit is reached it becomes unavailable for preordering. I believe that the preorder limit is less than number of each item boarded, so they may still be available on board. So it could be that they will board 6-6-4 items and limit preorders to 4-4-3 or something similar.