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In-flight meal service can be a long process. After all, the flight attendants have a lot of work to do during it.

You also have to get your food during the specific meal service times (unless you are in first and have a really nice flight attendant). So it’s either buy now, or miss out.

A new invention would scrap the need for flight attendants to personally deliver every option. Passengers would select what they want, and the item would be delivered via a device that is similar to those sushi conveyor belts.

According to Money Talk News:

A German company has filed a patent for a sushi-style conveyor belt that could distribute food on planes to passengers by ascending from under the cabin floor. The company, Sell GMBH, a German division of Zodiac Aerospace, specializes in ovens, coffee makers and other meal-service equipment for planes, Skift.com reports. The “unique under-floor food distribution mechanism, a hybrid of a conveyor and automat machine, which will let airlines dispense food and beverage directly to passengers without trolleys and with limited human intervention,” Skift.com said.

This is only at the patent stage, so it would be a while–if ever–before it makes it into an airplane. But this is a good sign.

It shows that the manufacturers of meal-service equipment are at least thinking about this issue.

And I like this sort of technology. Well, of course the conveyor belt aspect, but I primarily mean the on-demand food ordering.

I remember back when internet cafes started allowing you to place orders on the computers you were using. At that moment, I was like–wow, the future is here.

And now bars let you place orders via tablets and baseball stadiums let you even order food and drinks from your seats via mobile phones.

I like interacting with waitstaff–don’t get me wrong–but when you are intensely involved in a game of bar trivia and just want some nachos, it’s nice to be able to quickly punch that order in between rounds of frantically running your answers in.

What do you think of this solution? Something you’d want to see on planes? If not, what would you rather see?