Qantas announced it will cut approximately 850 jobs and shift work to professional services firm Accenture, with much of that work to be performed by Accenture teams based in India, The Guardian reported. The initial wave of roles affected will be in finance, procurement, human resources and marketing.
CEO Vanessa Hudson announced the cuts in an all-staff email, saying the scale and pace of change in technology and AI was unlike anything people had experienced in their lifetimes, and that standing still was not an option. She said the partnership with Accenture was necessary because reinvention at this scale could not be done alone, and that through a partner Qantas could access data and AI skills that every industry was competing for, as the airline could not hire at the pace the work required.
The airline struck a multi-year deal with Accenture covering back-end systems, processes and data modernisation. Some services will move to Accenture teams primarily based in India, with some remaining in Australia.
Qantas employs approximately 28,000 staff in Australia and around 4,000 globally. The airline described its back-end technology as carrying decades of technical debt, with over 1,000 legacy applications built for different eras and not designed to interoperate. The airline said corporate functions would be redesigned and streamlined under the arrangement, cutting duplication, and that work shifting to Accenture would over time be further transformed through automation and AI.
Mid-2027 is the target date for the first round of job changes to be completed. Before deciding individual employee outcomes, Qantas committed to consulting both affected staff and their unions. Hudson said no individual outcomes had yet been settled.
The Australian Services Union, which covers affected workers, said the airline owed its workers an explanation for the offshoring decision, given earlier promises that no roles would go overseas. Assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said AI was having a large impact on workers across the country but that the cost of technology change should not fall on workers who had kept the airline running, and that sending more jobs overseas was not in keeping with the spirit of Australia. Before this announcement, the union had sought and received assurances from Qantas that no Australian positions would be sent offshore.
The cuts come as Qantas faces elevated fuel costs linked to conflict in the Middle East. The airline flagged 4% flight reductions across Qantas and Jetstar and signalled it would adjust fares and capacity as higher fuel costs bite.
For FY26, Qantas posted a statutory profit after tax of $1.29 billion. Qantas said it spends more than $1 billion a year on technology, including through its Product Innovation Centre in Adelaide, which is intended to grow to more than 400 roles.
Affected staff will be consulted alongside their unions before individual decisions are finalised, and will be redeployed where possible to other roles including some in Australia. Around 850 Qantas employees in corporate functions face the prospect of losing or having their roles changed, with the first round of outcomes expected from mid-2027.
Reporting: The Guardian, The Nightly, Yahoo Finance, ABC News, iTnews, BBC
Written by Pick & Scroll News from the reporting and documents linked above.
