Qantas Will Cut About 850 Corporate Jobs as Accenture Takes Over Back-Office Work, Mostly From India

Qantas will cut about 850 corporate roles over the coming years and hand part of its back-office work to Accenture, chief executive Vanessa Hudson told staff in an email on November 10, 2026. The outsourced work will be “delivered mostly by its teams in India and some in Australia,” the email said, with the first changes expected by mid-2027.

The cuts equal about 3% of the group’s Australian workforce of 28,000, Reuters reported. It is the airline’s answer to a question it called undecided three months ago.

What Qantas told its staff

The first phase covers the finance, procurement and marketing teams, according to the email as quoted by the ABC. Reuters also lists human resources among the first functions affected.

“I know this is hard news for some, and I’m sorry for the uncertainty it brings,” Hudson wrote. She called the arrangement a new multi-year partnership with Accenture; no value or length for it has been reported.

Hudson framed the move as a technology overhaul. Qantas runs “more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together,” she said, and a partner gives it access to “the data and AI skills that every industry in the world is competing for.”

Individual outcomes have not been decided. Qantas will consult affected staff and their union over the next few months and redeploy as many people as it can, through retraining and new roles in Australia, Travel Weekly reported.

Investors welcomed it. Qantas shares were up 4% in morning trade on the ASX, at A$9.68, according to Travel Weekly, and the ABC put the day’s gain at more than 6%.

From “no decisions” in August to 850 roles in November

The plan first surfaced in early August, when reports of a project code-named Project iQ put the number at up to 1,000 back-office roles moving to India through Accenture, as Information Age covered at the time.

Qantas answered then that “no formal agreement is in place and no decisions have been made.” The Australian Services Union (ASU) said Qantas had told it there was no plan to offshore any Australian jobs.

That is why the union is angry now. “Earlier this year, Qantas told us directly there was no plan to offshore any jobs,” ASU assistant national secretary Scott Cowen said on Tuesday, adding that “Qantas staff have the right to an explanation.”

Cowen told the ABC the union would fight for every job and that most of the affected roles are in Sydney. A Qantas spokesperson rejected the idea of a broken promise, saying the airline never guaranteed which roles would stay in Australia and had met the union several times about the Accenture plan, Aviation A2Z reported.

Why outsourcing is a raw subject at Qantas

Qantas has been here before, with a very different kind of job. In 2020 it outsourced the work of more than 1,800 ground staff, a move the courts later ruled unlawful.

In August 2025 the Federal Court fined the airline A$90 million for it, on top of A$120 million in compensation paid to the workers, SBS reported. Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine pointed straight back to that case on Tuesday, accusing Qantas of finding “new ways to degrade the spirit of Australia beyond recognition.”

The difference is where the cuts fall. The 2020 outsourcing hit airport ground handling workers; this round targets head-office functions, while Qantas says it has added more than 4,400 operational roles since 2023.

Qantas is not alone in Australia either. Woolworths, Officeworks, Telstra and National Australia Bank announced similar offshoring moves earlier this year, according to Reuters, and Telstra built its version around a A$700 million joint venture with Accenture.

Other airlines are reshaping their support work too: KLM said last week it would shed almost 15% of its positions as ground handling and its call center move out.

A tight week on costs

The announcement came four days after a November 6 market update in which Qantas said it could “adjust fares and capacity in response to higher fuel costs,” the ABC reported. Fuel had already weighed on the group’s full-year results in August, when it still posted a A$1.29 billion statutory profit after tax.

Hudson tied the Accenture deal to technology rather than fuel, and Qantas is still spending on growth, from new long-haul flying such as nonstop Sydney to London to a growing operational workforce.

For the staff involved, the next step is consultation. The ASU met its Qantas members on site on Tuesday, and the first roles are due to change by mid-2027.