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Little Old Lady Returns Rental Van...
To Ticket Counter Inside Airport

Idaho Statesman
Wednesday, September 29, 2004

We've all had trouble returning rental cars at airports, so an elderly woman's mistake in Boise, Idaho, this week might be easy to understand.

The unidentified woman got to Boise Airport at around 6 a.m. Tuesday morning, so early that no one was at the car-return counter to help her.

She drove around a bit more, looking for another rental-car return, when she apparently spotted a helpful sign — another car, this time right inside the passenger terminal.

So she drove her rented minivan up a sidewalk handicapped ramp, through a pair of sliding-glass doors, past the baggage-claim area and ended up at the most logical place — back at the walk-up rental-car counter.

"She sees this car that we have on display that was an advertisement and drove past the baggage-claim devices, past the car and right up to the front of the car-rental counter, and was there to drop her car off," Boise Airport Director John Anderson said to Boise's KTVB-TV.

Police and Transportation Safety Administration personnel questioned the woman, but decided not to cite her.

"The lucky thing is she didn't hit anything," airport spokeswoman Larissa Stouffer told The Idaho Statesman.

Anderson admitted the airport still had some security issues to work out.

"It's a combination of something that we have corrected short term, and then we will correct long term, and we want to make sure nothing like this happens, and then again you have to look at the lighter side too," he told KTVB.

Stouffer told The Statesman that the airport had planned to put in safety barriers at the sliding door, but had not gotten around to it.

Later Tuesday, the door was blocked with a large trashcan as a temporary measure, Stouffer said.

The woman made her scheduled flight.

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