Two attackers killed five people and wounded 22 others on Wednesday in what Ankara called a terrorist attack at the Turkish Aerospace Industries headquarters, where witnesses said they heard gunfire and an explosion. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said both attackers were killed after the attack, adding two of the injured are in critical condition. TV broadcasters showed footage of armed assailants entering the TUSAS building near Ankara. "Two terrorists were neutralised in the terror attack on the TUSAS Ankara Kahramankazan site," Yerlikaya said. "Sadly, we have five martyrs and 22 wounded in the attack. Three of the injured were already discharged from hospital, 19 of them under treatment," he said. Yerlikaya said the perpetrators were "highly likely" members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). "The style of the act shows that it is highly likely the PKK that carried out the attack. Once identification is completed and other evidence become clearer, we will share more concrete information with you," he said. Turkish air forces conducted airstrikes in northern Iraq and northern Syria and destroyed 32 PKK targets, the defence ministry said late on Wednesday, adding that many PKK members were killed.<br/>
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London Heathrow Airport raised its forecast for passenger traffic this year as the UK hub processed record numbers of travelers during the peak summer season. Heathrow now expects a total of 83.8m passengers to pass through its doors in 2024, up from a previous prediction of 82.8m, it said on Wednesday while releasing third-quarter results. The summer was the busiest period ever with more than 30m passengers flying through Heathrow between June and September, according to the airport. There was also a surge in late summer flights because of music artists appearing in concerts, attracting people to the capital, the airport said. Among major performers in London this summer was US singer Taylor Swift. “We were seeing passengers traveling through Heathrow for all kinds of reasons, whether to see their families and friends, for holidays or for business trips and also to see Taylor Swift and going to Paris for the Olympics,” CFO Sally Ding said in an interview.<br/>
Birmingham Airport said it was "slowly returning to normal" after its terminal was evacuated over a suspicious vehicle. Many flights were grounded and people told to leave the airport building while a police operation got under way at about 12:20 BST. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team searched the vehicle which was "deemed to be safe", West Midlands Police said. An airport spokesperson apologised for "any inconvenience and disruption" but said "the safety and security of everyone at the airport was our number one priority as we worked through this incident with police partners." The evacuation affected passengers who were checking in for the flights, with a police cordon set up around the airport and people advised not to travel to the airport. The BBC understands passengers who had cleared security were permitted to go through to departures as they were deemed safe.<br/>
Facing a shortage of planes due to Western sanctions, Russia is in talks with some Central Asian countries for their airlines to run domestic flights and help meet a pick up in travel demand. Russian airlines, which use many Western aircraft delivered before the war in Ukraine, are struggling to meet growing demand for air travel as sanctions hinder access to parts and domestic production takes time to ramp up. Transport Minister Roman Starovoit said last week Russia was in talks with so-called "friendly" countries, including Kazakhstan, about foreign airlines operating domestic flights, Russian news agencies reported.<br/>Russia has also approached Uzbekistan, which is considering the proposal, an Uzbek government source told Reuters. "To date, there has been no official request from the Russian side on the issue," Kazakhstan's transport ministry said. Tajik and Krygyz authorities also said they had not received any official requests. Uzbekistan's transport ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Artem Zhavoronkov, a partner at Russian law firm Nordic Star, said Central Asian airlines were unlikely to want to risk running Russian domestic flights as that might lead to them in turn facing Western sanctions. "This is a serious risk and hardly any large companies from neighbouring countries will be prepared to accept it," Zhavoronkov said. Russian airlines saw passenger numbers drop 14.7% to 94.7m in 2022 as the Western sanctions hit and much of Europe closed its airspace to them.<br/>
Seven people have died in the Philippines as storm Trami barreled across the nation’s main island, causing massive flooding and prompting closure of its currency market for a second day on Thursday. The Bankers Association of the Philippines said the dollar/peso spot and swap markets will be shut and the central bank closed monetary operations following a suspension of government work in the main Luzon island. The stock market will be open, a spokesperson for the Philippine Stock Exchange said. Trami — known locally as Kristine — has made landfall over northern Isabela province, still packing maximum sustained winds of 95 km per hour and strong gale-force winds that extend outward up to 730 km, the Philippines’ weather agency said. Apart from the deaths, seven people were missing and nearly 200,000 people were displaced by the storm, according to the nation’s disaster management agency. Local airlines have canceled more than 70 flights on Thursday, adding to dozens of cancellations earlier in the week. Schools across Luzon were also shut for a second day.<br/>
Boeing’s largest union rejected a tentative labor contract on Wednesday by a wide margin, extending a damaging strike and adding to the mounting financial problems facing the company, which hours earlier had reported a $6.1b loss. The contract, the second that workers have voted down, was opposed by 64% of those voting, according to the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union represents about 33,000 workers, but it did not disclose how many voted on Wednesday. “There’s much more work to do. We will push to get back to the table, we will push for the members’ demands as quickly as we can,” said Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the union, which represents the vast majority of the workers and has led in the talks. He delivered that message at the union’s Seattle headquarters to a room of members chanting, “Fight, fight.” Boeing declined to comment on the vote, which was a setback for the company’s new CE, Kelly Ortberg, who is trying to restore its reputation and business with a strategy he described in detail earlier on Wednesday. In remarks to workers and investors, Ortberg said Boeing needed to undergo “fundamental culture change” to stabilize the business and to improve execution. “Our leaders, from me on down, need to be closely integrated with our business and the people who are doing the design and production of our products,” he said. “We need to be on the factory floors, in the back shops and in our engineering labs. We need to know what’s going on, not only with our products, but with our people.”<br/>
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg laid out a cautious path to turn the company around on Wednesday, calling for a "fundamental culture change" at the struggling planemaker as its quarterly losses surged to $6b due to a crippling strike. Boeing has racked up losses of nearly $8b for the current year, after the strike halted production of its 737 MAX, 777 and 767 planes and an ailing defense and space division hammer its business. The planemaker was already wrestling with a quality crisis from a January mid-air panel blowout. Boeing CFO Brian West told analysts he expects the company will continue burning cash in full year 2025 and the last three months of 2024, sending shares of Boeing down 1.7% to $157.15. In a letter to employees Wednesday morning, Ortberg stressed the need for improving performance in its defense business and its 737 MAX and 777 programs while broadly stabilizing Boeing. Ortberg went further than his recent predecessors in acknowledging the damage to Boeing's reputation has voided the company's "iconic" status, a term he used to describe Boeing when he was named as its new CE in August. "This is a big ship that will take some time to turn, but when it does, it has the capacity to be great again," Ortberg said. West said the company has a plan to address Boeing's balance sheet in the near term that could include an offering of equity and equity linked securities, but did not specify a time frame. Reuters has reported the raise could be around $15b. "Based on our current best estimates of market demand, planned production rates, timing of cash receipts and expenditures, and our expected ability to successfully implement actions to improve liquidity, we believe it is probable that we will be able to fund our operations for the foreseeable future," Boeing said in a regulatory filing.<br/>
Spirit AeroSystems posted deeper quarterly losses on Wednesday and said it was burning through dwindling cash reserves, as a strike by Boeing U.S. factory workers hammered the finances of its biggest supplier.<br/>Spirit said in its Q3 results that it had drawn down an entire $350m bridge loan set up when Boeing agreed to acquire the supplier in June, confirming an earlier report from Reuters. The supplier said it had not received $425m in cash advances it was expecting from Boeing under a memorandum of understanding signed in April, leaving it with just $218m in reserves at the end of the third quarter after the loan was drawn. Spirit shares fell 4% in after-hours trading following the release of its results. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the cash advance. Earlier on Wednesday, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said on an earnings call that there was "no change" to its planned acquisition and integration of Spirit. Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit said this month it would implement a 21-day furlough for 700 workers as a five-week strike at Boeing eats into the supplier's cash and inventory space. Boeing suppliers that invested heavily on materials and tooling to support the planemaker's planned ramp-up of jets have been furloughing workers in recent weeks and holding off on investments due to the strike.<br/>
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the UAE's largest sovereign wealth fund, will invest about $750m in the debt of India's GMR Group, giving it a foothold in one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets. The investment will also allow the Indian company to reduce the pledged shareholding on its airports business. ADIA has invested in structured debt instruments of a unit of GMR Enterprises (GEPL), the holding company of GMR Group. GMR Enterprises owns a roughly 25% stake in GMR Airports. The funds will be used to refinance all external debt of GMR Enterprises, which is looking to lower its pledge on the shareholding of GMR Airports "significantly", GMR Group said in an exchange filing. GMR Enterprises' total debt had increased nearly 4% year-on-year to 44.77b rupees ($532.5m), according to its latest annual report. "This investment from ADIA will facilitate the repayment of all external debt at GEPL, strengthening our ability to support the continued growth of GMR Airports," said GMR Group Corporate Chairman Kiran Grandhi.<br/>