As the airline accelerates its investment in AI, Qantas will outsource 850 local corporate jobs to the massive consulting firm Accenture, with the majority of these positions shifting to India. Vanessa Hudson, the CEO of the Australian company, stated that “this is hard news for some and I’m sorry for the uncertainty it brings” in an internal email to employees on Tuesday. As the company works to upgrade its IT systems, the job cutbacks will start in the middle of 2027, she added, with finance, procurement, people, and marketing positions moving “mostly” to teams in India and “some in Australia.
Hudson said the “scale and speed of change in technology and AI is something none of us has seen in our lifetime” and said the airline discussed the plans with employees and unions. The action was taken a few days after the airline released a market update that highlighted rate increases and flight reductions due to rising fuel prices. Hudson stated that the goal of the airline’s recent multi-year agreement with Accenture was to modernise” its IT systems to make them “more efficient.” She stated that Qantas has to modernise its back-end systems and spends over AU$1 billion (US$691 million; £514 million) annually on technology.We operate on technology developed over decades for a different age, including over 1,000 legacy programs that were never intended to cooperate, just like any airline, she stated.
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