Having a commercial pickup/dropoff of cars occur where people stop to pick up grandma is certainly something airports can’t allow while at the same time charging the rental car companies big money to operate from the airport.

While very hard to address, it shouldn’t be harder to address than it is to address the problem of unlicensed taxis at airport arrival. And if the example from the article involved the person renting the car having to meet the renter at a McDonalds parking 5km from the airport, it wouldn’t sound as attractive.

Sure, that's true. The way I think of it is that the rental office cost is their cost of customer acquisition.

So the real advantage is that once you get an app install the first time you don't have to keep paying for new customers.

Which brings me back, shouldn't an app be something that Hertz should be working on in addition to everything else they've already done?

But the airport is also where most of the customers are.