Nearly $400,000 in parking fees lost at Sea-Tac Airport

SEATAC, Wash. — Hundreds of thousands of dollars in parking fees were never collected from drivers at Sea-Tac Airport because of a glitch in a credit card processing machine.

The Port of Seattle said it's still trying to figure out what went wrong.

According to a state auditor’s report, the problem was a result of an internal processing failure that happened more than 10,000 times this year and about 800 times in 2011.

The glitch cost the port nearly $400,000.

The prt said the lost money is less than 1 percent of about $50 million a year the parking garage makes.

Authorities said a third-party forensic analysis is under way to pinpoint the glitch.

The vendor, Scheidt and Bachmann, has also been contacted to see if the problem was caused by a faulty machine.

While the port investigates, it assures drivers the machine has been fixed and charges will be accurate.

KIRO