Qantas Plans to Cut 850 Head-Office Roles as Work Moves to Accenture Teams

A major restructuring of corporate operations

Qantas has announced plans to eliminate roughly 850 positions in Australia and hand a range of back-office responsibilities to the consulting group Accenture. Chief executive Vanessa Hudson disclosed the decision in a message to employees on Tuesday, November 10, 2026. The reductions will unfold gradually, with the initial stage scheduled to take effect by mid-2027. The affected roles represent about 3 per cent of the airline’s domestic staff of 28,000.

Which functions are affected

The first wave of changes will reach finance, procurement, human resources and marketing. Accenture will take over many of these tasks, and the teams carrying them out will be located mainly in India, though some work will remain onshore. Ms Hudson framed the move as a response to fast-moving shifts in the aviation sector driven by artificial intelligence, arguing that the company needs outside expertise it cannot recruit quickly enough on its own.

Modernising a tangled technology estate

According to Ms Hudson, Qantas runs more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never built to communicate with one another. Overhauling those systems and linking the data they hold is, in her account, the essential precondition for expanding the airline’s use of AI. She said the goal was to become more efficient so that money could be redirected toward customers, staff and future growth. She also acknowledged the unease the announcement would cause, saying, “I’m sorry for the uncertainty it brings.”

Union objections and disputed assurances

The Australian Services Union has strongly opposed the plan. Its New South Wales secretary, Angus McFarland, said most of the targeted positions sit at the airline’s headquarters in Mascot, Sydney, and argued that offshoring both jobs and skills from the national carrier serves no Australian interest. Scott Cowen, the union’s assistant national secretary, said Qantas had told staff in August that no Australian jobs would be sent overseas. Qantas has rejected the claim that it ever gave such a promise, stating that it had held repeated discussions with the union about the possibility of some roles moving to Accenture, with work delivered by teams in both India and Australia.

Wider trend among Australian employers

Qantas is not alone. Several large Australian businesses, including Woolworths, Officeworks, Telstra and National Australia Bank, have declared comparable offshoring plans this year as they look to lower costs and streamline operations.

What next

Ms Hudson said the outcomes for individual employees have not been settled, and that Qantas will consult its workforce and the union over the coming months. The union is pressing for clarity on how many jobs will go, which positions will stay in Australia, what retraining will be provided, and how redundancy payments will reflect length of service. Qantas has said it intends to keep as many people as possible within the group through redeployment, retraining and reskilling, though the detailed arrangements are still being worked out as the transition proceeds.