Qantas will outsource 850 local corporate jobs to the consulting firm Accenture, with most of the roles moving to India, as the airline speeds up its investment in artificial intelligence.
Chief executive Vanessa Hudson told staff in an internal email on Tuesday that the news was hard for some. "I'm sorry for the uncertainty it brings," she said.
The job cuts will begin in mid-2027. Finance, procurement, people and marketing roles will be the first to shift, mostly to teams in India and some in Australia. Hudson said the airline was in talks with unions and staff about the plans.
The move comes days after Qantas gave a market update that flagged fare increases and flight cuts because of higher fuel costs.
Hudson said the new multi-year deal with Accenture was aimed at modernizing the airline's IT systems so it could become more efficient. She said Qantas spends more than AU$1 billion (US$691 million; £514 million) a year on technology and that its back-end systems needed to be upgraded.
She said the airline, like every airline, relies on technology built up over decades for a different era. That includes more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together.
Under the deal, Hudson said, Accenture will redesign and simplify parts of how Qantas' corporate functions work and reduce duplication. This will allow staff to spend more time on work that creates value for customers and the business.
The company said the work Accenture takes over will, in time, be transformed further through automation and AI. Hudson said the scale and speed of change in technology and AI was something no one had seen in their lifetime.
Staff affected by the job cuts will be redeployed where possible, including into new roles in Australia, the company said.
Qantas employs about 28,000 people in Australia and another 4,000 globally. The company said thousands of its staff already use AI in their daily work.
Source: BBC
