Urban Legend?
 

A flight attendant on a United Air Lines cross-country flight
nervously announced: about 30 minutes outbound from LA,
"I don't know how this happened, but we have 103 passengers
aboard and only 40 dinners."

When the passengers' muttering had died down, she continued,
"Anyone who is kind enough to give up his meal so someone
else can eat will receive free drinks for the length of the
flight."

Her next announcement came an hour later. "If anyone wants
to change his mind, we still have 29 dinners available!

We were recently on flight that 12 first class seats and only 6 meals. :(

Both the captain and the copilot gave up their meals, and some of the rest of us, me included, got free BOB meals, which happened to be chicken Ceasar salads, which were actually not too bad.

Oh yeah, we also got free drinks. ;)

Most likely UL. But certainly not a recent UL!

The mis-catering happens all the time (I get a couple flights a
year with this problem). The invariable offer is that those who
pass up the inflight meal get one of those airport food vouchers
... that's on UA; last time it happened to me on DL, they offered
zip, zero.

We were on Ryanair, who do not do any standard meals but sell snacks and drinks inflight.

When the FAs started off they offered just drinks for purchase, and when I asked what food they had, the answer was "Nothing today, they forgot to load it at London Stansted".

To which the obvious reply was "Well, I hope a more professional approach was taken with the fuel". Cue laughter all round from the passengers and dirty looks from the FAs.

funny. I was on an AS flight coming back from Mexico in February when a meal shortage struck. People were not pleased, but the free drinks helped.

Flying SAS to USA about 10 years ago, my aunt was the only one not to recieve a meal on the short 140 mile hop between GOT and CPH. She made a remark about this at the gate in CPH and got upgraded on the transatlantic leg!