Expedia Inc

JetBlue Airways Corp. will begin listing its flights on Expedia Inc., the world's biggest online travel agency, after posting losses for all of 2006 and this year's first quarter. JetBlue agreed to list its flights on Expedia and Expedia unit Hotwire for five years, the companies said Thursday. The airline, which flies only in the U.S. and the Caribbean, trails Southwest Airlines Co. among U.S. low-cost carriers.

Online travel company Expedia Inc. said Tuesday that it would buy back more than a third of its shares for as much as $3.5 billion, paying a premium of at least 8% over the stock's closing price Monday. Expedia said it would repurchase 116.7 million shares at $27.50 to $30 each. The news sent Expedia shares up $3.64, or 14%, to $29.14. The price range that Expedia is willing to pay represents a premium of 8% to 18% over Monday's closing price of $25.50 a share.

The cost of raising money in the junk bond market continued to surge Monday, spurring online travel firm Expedia Inc. to sharply scale back plans to borrow money to buy back stock. Also Monday, Allison Transmission, a General Motors Corp. unit that makes automatic transmissions for trucks and buses, postponed a sale of $3.5 billion of loans, said Leveraged Commentary & Data, a Standard & Poor's publication. The loans would have helped pay for the unit's $5.

Orbitz Inc., Expedia Inc. and a dozen other online travel companies were sued Thursday by San Diego's city attorney, who accused them of failing to turn over $30 million in taxes they collected on hotel rooms they booked. City Atty. Michael Aguirre said the companies failed to pay the city "transient occupancy" taxes of $6 million they charged their customers for each of the last five years. "They're charging the customer at the retail level and paying the city at wholesale level," Aguirre said.

Entertainment mogul Barry Diller, who is the chairman and chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and chairman of Expedia Inc., realized a combined $464 million from exercising stock options of both companies last year.

IAC/InterActiveCorp, billionaire Barry Diller's Internet company, will give $250 million in cash to its Expedia unit to provide it with capital when it is spun off as a public company. Expedia, which will consist of travel businesses Hotels.com, Hotwire, Expedia.com and other websites, will have a revolving credit line of $500 million at the time of the spinoff, New York-based IAC said in a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Diller on Dec.

EARLY this month, some astute travelers noticed that Expedia was selling hotel rooms at two Hiltons in Japan for the fire-sale price of less than $4 per night. What began as a simple error in the conversion of yen into U.S. dollars quickly snowballed into a public relations nightmare for Expedia. "There was a technical problem," said Linda Bain, vice president of communication for Hilton International.

Expedia Inc. said fourth-quarter profit rose more than fourfold as more people used the company's Web site. Also, founder and Chief Executive Richard Barton resigned. Barton will be succeeded by Erik Blachford, president of Expedia's North American operations, the company said. Net income jumped to $21.4 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with $5.22 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier. Sales more than doubled to $163.9 million. Shares of Bellevue, Wash.-based Expedia gained $2.93, or 5.

Hilton Hotels Corp., striking back at discount hotel Internet sites, said Monday that it agreed to give online travel service Expedia Inc. access to its central reservation system. The two-year partnership is part of a strategy aimed at eliminating deeply discounted Hilton hotel rooms on the Internet. In return, Expedia has pledged not to undercut Hilton's prices and agreed to significantly cut its commissions to the hotel operator.