SYDNEY — Qantas, Australia's largest airline, will cut 850 corporate positions and hand much of the work to the consulting firm Accenture, which will deliver most of the services from India, the airline told staff in an email on Tuesday, AAP reported. The cuts include mass redundancies and will roll out over the coming years under a multi-year partnership, with the first phase covering finance, procurement, human resources (the airline calls the function 'people') and marketing. Some roles will remain in Australia, and others will in time be transformed further by automation and AI, Australian Aviation reported.

Source: AAP (Australian Associated Press), Nov 10 2026

Chief executive Vanessa Hudson told workers she was sorry for the uncertainty. “I know this is hard news for some,” she wrote in the email to staff, AAP reported. “(The changes) are about modernising the technology behind our business and becoming more efficient, so we can keep investing in our customers, our people and our future.” Individual outcomes have not yet been determined, she said, and the airline will consult affected employees and their unions over the coming months. Accenture and Qantas will together redesign and simplify the airline's corporate functions.

Source: AAP (Australian Associated Press), Nov 10 2026

Hudson's business case rests on the airline's ageing back office. Qantas runs on more than 1,000 older software applications that were never designed to work together, she told staff, and spends more than AU$1 billion a year on technology — yaani roughly US$691 million. “The scale and speed of change in this space is unprecedented … leading organisations around the world are well progressed in using technology and AI to completely transform how they work, and standing still is not an option for us,” she said, citing unwieldy back-office workflows and the impact of artificial intelligence. The airline's new Product Innovation Centre in Adelaide is separately expected to grow to more than 400 roles, HCAMag reported.

Source: Human Resources Director (HCAMag), Nov 10 2026

A billion-dollar profit, and a fuel bill that ate into it

The announcement lands weeks after Qantas reported its 2025/26 results in August: a net profit of AU$1.3 billion, down 19.8 per cent on the previous year, with underlying pre-tax profit down 13.8 per cent to AU$2.1 billion despite revenue rising 7.1 per cent to AU$25.5 billion, AAP reported. High jet fuel costs, driven by the Middle East conflict, shaved AU$420 million off the annual profit after the fuel bill came in AU$610 million over budget. The airline has already cancelled a planned AU$150 million share buyback, warned it may need to find another AU$200 million to cover a AU$3.8 billion fuel bill for the first half of the new financial year, and flagged that airfares could rise again in 2027.

Source: AAP (Australian Associated Press), Nov 10 2026

Why this matters beyond Australia — and what happens next

For readers in India and the Punjabi diaspora, the direction of travel is the story: a flagship Western airline is moving skilled back-office work — finance, procurement, HR and marketing — to teams in India, at the same moment as AI tools reshape what those teams do. The same pattern is now running through Australian corporate life more broadly: the Qantas plan is the third major restructuring flagged in the country in three weeks, after moves at design company Canva and National Australia Bank, The Guardian reported. What happens next is procedural but consequential: months of consultation with staff and unions will decide which specific roles go, the first changes take effect by mid-2027, and unions — the Australian Services Union among them — are expected to press the airline on how a company that just made AU$1.3 billion justifies sending the work offshore. The BBC said it had contacted the Australian Services Union for comment.