Qantas to outsource 850 local jobs with most roles moving to India

Qantas will outsource 850 local corporate jobs to consulting giant Accenture with most roles moving to India as the airline fast-tracks AI investment.In an internal email to staff on Tuesday, the Australian company's CEO Vanessa Hudson said "this is hard news for some and I'm sorry for the uncertainty it brings".The job cuts will begin mid-2027, she said, and start with finance, procurement, people and marketing roles shifting "mostly" to teams in India and "some in Australia" as the firm seeks to modernise its IT systems.Hudson said the "scale and speed of change in technology and AI is something none of us has seen in our lifetime", and it was in talks with unions and staff on the plans.The move comes days after the airline provided a market update, flagging fare increases and flight cuts amid higher fuel costs.On its new multi-year deal with Accenture, Hudson said it was about "modernising" the airline's IT systems to become "more efficient". Qantas spends more than AU$1bn (US$691m; £514m) a year on technology, she said, and the company's back-end systems needed to be upgraded."Like every airline, we run on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more tha...