Qantas will cut 850 office jobs and hand the work to Accenture, calling it an AI overhaul

Qantas told staff on Tuesday that it will eliminate about 850 corporate jobs in Australia over the next few years. Much of that work will move to Accenture, the global consulting and outsourcing firm, and most of it will be done by Accenture teams in India.

The airline presented the deal as a push to modernize with AI. Investors approved: Qantas shares rose more than 6% after the announcement, ABC News reported. For executives tracking how large companies are really restructuring around AI, the details matter more than the label.

The 850 roles are about 3% of Qantas's roughly 28,000 Australian employees. The first phase covers finance, procurement, human resources and marketing. Qantas expects the first changes to be in place by mid-2027.

Outsource first, automate later

The order of events is the key detail. Accenture takes over some corporate services first. Automation and AI are then meant to reshape those services over time. As Airways Magazine pointed out, that means the 850 figure is not a count of jobs replaced by AI.

Qantas has not said how many roles will disappear outright and how many will simply transfer to Accenture. It has disclosed no contract value and no savings target. For now, investors are rewarding a cost cut whose size the company has not stated.

Chief executive Vanessa Hudson's case rests on the airline's aging technology. In her staff email she said Qantas runs on "more than 1,000 legacy applications" that were never built to work together. Accenture will invest upfront to modernize the airline's data systems, according to Airways Magazine.

Hudson also argued the deal gives Qantas data and AI specialists it could not hire fast enough on its own, IBTimes UK reported. "I know this is hard news for some," she wrote. Qantas says it will redeploy and retrain staff where possible, but it has not guaranteed other roles for everyone.

The airline is not short of money for technology. It spends more than A$1 billion a year on it, Mediaweek reported, and is growing a tech hub in Adelaide to more than 400 roles. But costs elsewhere are rising. A Nov. 6 market update put fuel costs for the six months to December near A$3.75 billion and said prices could stay high through the financial year.

A fight over what the union was told

The cuts were not a complete surprise. In August, the Australian Financial Review reported that Qantas was in advanced talks to move up to 1,000 back-office roles to India in a project tied to Accenture. At the time, Qantas told Information Age that no formal agreement was in place and "no decisions have been made."

The Australian Services Union says it was assured there was no plan to offshore Australian jobs. Assistant national secretary Scott Cowen called the news "really shocking" for members. Qantas says it never guaranteed that particular roles would stay in Australia, and that it held several meetings with the union about work moving to Accenture.

The airline's history raises the stakes. In 2020, Qantas outsourced ground handling at 10 airports. Courts later found that decision broke Australia's main workplace law. The Federal Court imposed a A$90 million penalty in August 2025, and Qantas paid A$120 million into a compensation fund for 1,820 former workers, IBTimes UK noted.

This deal is different. It covers office roles, and Qantas says it will consult staff and the union before individual outcomes are decided. Still, the union says it will fight for every job, and unions want firmer guarantees and more transparency. Labor risk is part of the price of this plan.

Accenture's growing list of Australian clients

Qantas is joining a list. Telstra, Australia's largest telecom company, formed a A$700 million joint venture with Accenture last year. Supermarket chain Coles has reportedly moved up to 1,000 jobs offshore after partnering with the firm. Other employers are shifting office work abroad too: National Australia Bank plans to hire more than 1,000 staff in Vietnam and India, Mediaweek reported.

The pattern is worth naming. AI is giving companies a fresh reason to revisit an old move: shifting back-office work to cheaper locations. Consultancies sell the modernization and run the work. For Accenture, each deal is years of contracted revenue. For the client, the savings from cheaper labor arrive first, while the promised automation is a later bet.

That leaves buyers and investors with clear questions. How many of the 850 roles are cut, and how many transferred? What savings will Qantas attach to the deal at its next results? And if the AI phase underdelivers, does the work simply stay offshore at a lower wage?

The answer to the last question will shape how much weight anyone should give to the next company that calls an outsourcing deal an AI transformation.