Qantas Airways to outsource 850 corporate jobs to India

Australian airline Qantas is planning to outsource 850 of its corporate employee positions to consulting firm Accenture, with most roles being relocated to India. According to a report by BBC News, the company is taking this decision to increase investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to modernise its IT systems.

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson stated in an internal email sent to staff on Tuesday, "This is bitter news for some and I am sorry for the uncertainty it creates." The job reductions will begin from mid-2027. This includes positions primarily in the Finance, Procurement, People, and Marketing departments, most of which will move to Indian teams while some will remain in Australia.

Hudson stated that the scale and speed of transformation in technology and AI is something we have never seen in our lifetimes. The company stated that the new multi-year contract with Accenture aims to modernise the airline's IT systems to make them more efficient. Qantas spends more than AU$1 billion annually on technology and needs to upgrade its back-end systems.

According to Hudson, the company has decades-old technology, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were not designed to work together. The contract with Accenture will redesign and simplify the workflow of corporate functions so that staff can spend more time on valuable work for customers and the business. The company added that over time, the work taken on by Accenture will be further transformed by automation and AI.

Staff affected by these job cuts will be redeployed elsewhere, including new roles in Australia wherever possible. Thousands of Qantas employees are already using AI in their daily work.

Qantas is a major Australian airline that employs approximately 28,000 people in Australia and another 4,000 globally.