Qantas will shift 850 corporate jobs to the consulting giant Accenture, with most of the roles moving to teams in India, as Australia's flag carrier races to modernize decades-old back-office systems and expand its use of artificial intelligence.
Chief executive Vanessa Hudson told staff of the decision in an internal email Tuesday, writing that "this is hard news for some and I'm sorry for the uncertainty it brings." The cuts, which will begin in mid-2027, will start with finance, procurement, human resources and marketing positions, Hudson said, shifting "mostly" to teams in India and "some in Australia." Affected staff will be offered redeployment where possible, including into new roles created in Australia, and the airline said it is consulting with unions on the plans.
A bet on AI to untangle decades of legacy systems
Hudson framed the move as a response to how fast the underlying technology is changing, telling staff that "the scale and speed of change in technology and AI is something none of us has seen in our lifetime." Qantas spends more than 1 billion Australian dollars, or roughly $691 million, a year on technology, she said, and its back-end systems have not kept pace: the airline operates more than 1,000 legacy applications, built up over decades, that were never designed to work with one another.
The new multi-year deal with Accenture is intended to "redesign and simplify" how Qantas's corporate functions operate and cut duplicated work, Hudson said, freeing remaining staff to focus on tasks that more directly serve customers and the business. The airline added that the work Accenture takes over will eventually be "transformed further with automation and AI."
Qantas employs about 28,000 people in Australia and another 4,000 elsewhere, and the company said thousands of staff already use AI tools in their daily work. The move follows a pattern among large Australian employers: telecommunications group Telstra recently cut around 200 jobs at a joint venture, with some of that work also relocated to India, as companies across the economy weigh AI-driven cost cuts against the political sensitivity of sending white-collar jobs offshore.
The announcement comes just days after Qantas gave investors a market update flagging fare increases and flight reductions tied to higher fuel costs, underscoring the margin pressure driving the airline's push to cut corporate costs elsewhere. The Australian Services Union, which represents many of the affected workers, has not yet issued a public response to Tuesday's announcement.
