The Verge:

Over the next 18 months OTG will install 6,000 iPads on tables, bars, and stations near waiting areas throughout United Airline’s terminal at Newark. Flashing your boarding pass in front of the iPad’s camera pulls up your United profile, with flight information, travel updates, and frequent flier miles. The program, which is opt-in, learns your preferences from your past purchases and recommends things it thinks you might want to buy. If you never buy the orange juice, it will start showing you other options; if you keep buying steak frites, it will show you steak sandwiches. “This is the game changer for personalization,” says Albert Lee, OTG’s chief technology officer.

It’s a $120 million project that will bring 55 new restaurants to the facility, some quite high-end for an airport. There will be sushi, bahn mi, steak, dim sum, barbecue, a french brasserie, and a ramen pulling station beneath a metal mesh tower. All of them will use the iPad ordering system.

Beneath the glitzy new hardware, OTG is using iOS to automate its restaurants’ workflows. When you buy something, OTG’s software, called Flo, sends the order directly to an iPad in the kitchen. You pay either with frequent flier miles or with a credit card, swiped at a reader on the table. When the order is up, the kitchen notifies a server through an iPod touch each employee carries. If an order doesn’t get picked up in a timely manner, the system pings the entire staff. “We have accountability every step of the way to make this a much more efficient process,” Lee says.

There are a number of restaurant chains that use iPad ordering systems. I think it makes the experience more interesting, certainly, but it also makes the whole kitchen to table process more efficient, gives more control to the patron. For example, no need to flag down a waiter to get a drink refill, get another order of ceviche for the table, or pay the check.

Bringing this experience to the airport is a natural fit. Privacy is an issue, as you are giving away personal data in exchange for more personalized service. And I can’t help but suspect that data will be packaged and sold. Interesting times.