Qantas to Outsource 850 Corporate Jobs to Accenture, Mostly in India
Qantas said on Tuesday it will outsource 850 corporate jobs to Accenture, with most roles shifting to India as the airline steps up AI investment. Cuts begin in mid-2027, and the Australian Services Union says the airline must explain why it is sending work offshore.
Qantas will outsource 850 local corporate jobs to the consulting firm Accenture, with most of the roles moving to India, the Australian airline said on Tuesday, November 10, 2026. The company says the shift will speed up its investment in technology and artificial intelligence.
Chief executive Vanessa Hudson told staff in an internal email that "this is hard news for some and I'm sorry for the uncertainty it brings." The cuts start in mid-2027.
Which jobs are affected
The first roles to move are in finance, procurement, people and marketing. Hudson said they would shift "mostly" to teams in India and "some in Australia" under a new multi-year deal with Accenture.
Qantas said staff will be redeployed "where possible", including into new roles in Australia. The airline employs about 28,000 people in Australia and another 4,000 globally, and says it is in talks with unions and staff.
Why Qantas says it is doing it
Hudson pointed to aging systems. Qantas spends more than AU$1bn (US$691m; £514m) a year on technology, she said, yet its back-end systems need upgrading.
"Like every airline, we run on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together," she said.
The Accenture deal will let Qantas "redesign and simplify parts of how our corporate functions work and reduce duplication", Hudson said. That should free staff to "spend more time on work that creates value for our customers and the business".
The company said the work Accenture takes over will, "in time", be "transformed further with automation and AI". Qantas added that thousands of its employees already use AI in their daily work.
Pressure on Australian workers
The announcement follows a market update late last week, in which Qantas flagged fare increases and flight cuts as jet fuel costs rose. It said customer demand remained resilient.
It is the third major corporate layoff plan in Australia in three weeks. National Australia Bank targeted 2,500 roles and design company Canva 1,200, bringing the total across the three companies to about 4,550 corporate jobs in the past month.
The Australian Services Union says Qantas must explain itself, because the airline had earlier promised it had no plans to move jobs offshore. Assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said the cost of technology change "should not be borne by the workers who have kept the airline running for years".
"Sending more jobs overseas is not in the spirit of Australia," Cowen said.
