In a major operational overhaul announced Tuesday via internal correspondence to its workforce, Australian flag carrier Qantas has confirmed it will eliminate 850 domestic corporate roles by outsourcing the functions to global professional services leader Accenture, with the vast majority of the affected positions set to be relocated to India as the airline ramps up long-planned investments in artificial intelligence and legacy system upgrades.
Vanessa Hudson, Qantas Group Chief Executive, opened the internal staff memo with a direct, unreserved apology for the disruption and uncertainty the restructuring will bring to impacted team members, framing the decision as a necessary response to unprecedented technological upheaval reshaping the global aviation sector. The phased rollout of role transfers will commence in mid-2027, starting with functions across the finance, procurement, human resources, and marketing divisions. A small subset of the outsourced work will remain based in Australia, Hudson clarified, as the carrier prioritizes a multi-year overhaul of its creaking, decades-old back-end technology infrastructure.
“The pace and scale of AI and digital transformation unfolding right now is unlike anything any of us have experienced in our professional lifetimes,” Hudson stated in the communication, noting that leadership is currently in active, ongoing consultation with relevant trade unions and affected staff representatives to mitigate harms during the transition period. The restructuring announcement lands less than a week after Qantas issued a public market update warning of imminent air fare hikes and targeted flight schedule reductions, driven by sustained elevated global jet fuel costs that have squeezed the airline’s operating margins in recent quarters.
The new multi-year strategic partnership with Accenture is designed to streamline Qantas’ sprawling technology ecosystem, which currently hosts more than 1,000 disjointed legacy applications built for a pre-digital aviation landscape that were never engineered to integrate seamlessly with one another. The carrier already allocates over 1 billion Australian dollars (equivalent to US$691 million, or £514 million) annually to its technology budget, and leadership says the Accenture collaboration will eliminate redundant corporate workflows and simplify core back-office operations, freeing remaining in-house teams to focus on high-impact, customer-centric value creation rather than repetitive administrative tasks. Over time, the outsourced workflows will be further optimized using automation tools and generative AI, the company confirmed.
Qantas currently employs roughly 28,000 people across Australia, with an additional 4,000 staff stationed in international markets, and thousands of its existing workforce already leverage AI tools as part of their day-to-day job responsibilities. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has reached out to the Australian Services Union, the primary representative body for many of the affected corporate staff, for an official response to the restructuring plans as of press time.