Qantas Will Win This Year. That's The Problem.
The feeling it sold for forty years is the very thing it's now spending.
You don’t have to question if Qantas is going to have a good year out of these recent changes announced, and that's exactly what worries me.
On Tuesday Vanessa Hudson emailed her people to tell them around 850 roles will be affected over the coming years, starting in finance, procurement, people and marketing, with the work moving to Accenture and delivered mostly out of India, and the first changes in place by mid-2027. She called it hard news for some and she apologised for the uncertainty, and look, I truly believe she meant it. The thing we saw instantly was that the share price went up anyway.
That's the clear indication of the market telling you what it thinks it's getting. But the customer hasn't decided yet.
Nobody ever chose Qantas on price.
Think about the last time you booked Qantas when there was a cheaper fare sitting right there on the same screen. You either didn't do the maths, or you did it and paid more anyway, and if I'm honest that's the whole business. Qantas has been calling itself the Spirit of Australia since 1984 and it was never really a tagline, it was a promise, and the question it answered was something close to who do I want to be when I'm flying home.
I've been in this exact spot myself, weighing up flights overseas for work with cheaper options sitting right there in front of me, and then I picked Qantas anyway. I expected the service to be better, I expected to be more comfortable and to actually enjoy being on the plane, and if I'm honest something about it being Australian just made it make more sense. That was the whole decision.
That's an emotional default. You pick it for how it makes you feel, and you keep picking it until the picking stops being a decision at all.
Coles did the same deal in August and nobody blinked.
Same consultancy, same kind of roles. Coles extended its partnership with Accenture and told staff several hundred back-office roles across finance, HR, marketing and technology would be made redundant, redeployed or retrained. Woolworths had already announced its own move to Asia in June, Telstra in February. Can you remember how you felt about any of them... probably not.
Why, because nobody buys groceries from Coles for a feeling. Groceries means Coles, the equation is short, it's a cognitive default and the customer stopped thinking about it years ago, so moving a finance team offshore doesn't touch anything the customer is actually buying.
Qantas is a different animal though. Same spreadsheet, same decision, but Qantas is spending something Coles never had in the account.
The cheaper the feeling you sell, the cheaper this decision is. Qantas sells an expensive one.
Yes, Australians have forgiven Qantas before.
I can hear the pushback already and it's totally fair. In 2020 Qantas outsourced around 1,700 ground staff and the High Court ruled in 2023 that it was unlawful. Then came the ghost flights, tickets sold on flights it had already decided to cancel, which ended in a $100 million penalty and around $20 million paid back to more than 86,000 customers. Then the 2025 data breach, more than five million Australians. And every single time the planes stayed full.
So people always come back. They do. But look at why they come back now.
It's the points balance, the status tier, the lounge, the network and, on a lot of routes, the fact there's nowhere else to go. Somewhere in the last six years the reason shifted, and Australians started choosing Qantas less and staying with Qantas more.
Being chosen and being kept look the same on a revenue report. They are not the same business.
I say to clients all the time that repetition is what becomes your reputation, and I mean it as encouragement, because the brands that repeat the same feeling again and again earn the right to be the default. Now, here's the uncomfortable version. Qantas has been repeating something for six years too. Each incident on its own gets forgiven, but lined up next to each other they stop being incidents and start being who you are, and Tuesday's email is one more in the line that's starting to get long.
Here's what I think happens next.
Year one looks great. Costs come out, analysts like the margin story and somebody gets told they made a very brave call.
Then the first real test arrives, and it won't be dramatic. A cancelled flight, a lost bag, a points problem that takes three calls and gets handled a long way from the customer. Before Tuesday that's a bad day. After Tuesday it's evidence, and the customer reads every frustration back through that email whether Qantas likes it or not.
Here's the part I don’t think anybody’s costing up.
Qantas won't lose its customers. It'll lose the benefit of the doubt, and that's the more expensive of the two in my opinion, because the benefit of the doubt is what lets you charge more and get forgiven faster.
You'll see it first in the premium. People will still fly Qantas but they'll compare now, and once a customer starts comparing you're not the default anymore, you're simply an option.
You'll see it inside too. Everyone at Qantas just watched 850 roles get earmarked with the details to come by mid-2027, and those people still have to deliver the promise to you in the meantime. Marketing is in the first wave, the team closest to what Spirit of Australia actually means, moving into a business whose own agency, Droga5, already leads Qantas creative on Project Sunrise. I'm genuinely not sure who's holding the promise once that's done.
And then one day a credible alternative turns up on a route that matters, and loyalty that was really just a points balance does exactly what points balances do.
We've just watched a version of this just play out in retail. David Jones went into voluntary administration last week after 188 years, and I wrote about it here. What sticks with me is how long it looked fine from the outside.
Some of this genuinely has to happen.
Hudson's email talks about more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together, and anyone who's tried to run a business on systems built for a different decade knows exactly what that costs. Modernising was always coming. What concerns me is that the decision got priced in the language of the P&L, and the promise never made it onto the spreadsheet.
So before you sign your own version of this deal, and believe me, plenty of you will be offered one, make sure you do two things.
Write down the feeling your customer actually buys from you, in their words not yours. Then go through every role you're about to move and ask, honestly, which of them help deliver that feeling. Trust me, more of them will sit in the back office than you'd think.
Then ask what's really keeping your customers. If it's how you make them feel, protect it like the asset it is and invest in it. If it's the switching cost, you're already on borrowed time and a decision like this will just tell you how much.
Qantas will make its numbers this year.
The shareholders will be happy.
And one day someone will be standing at a gate with a cheaper fare on their phone...
and won't be able to remember why they ever paid more.
Not clear on the feeling your brand sells? That's where every decision like this should start.
Nick Gray - Founder and CEO of IGU Global
About the author
Nick Gray is the founder of IGU Global, a Sydney brand strategy and retail consultancy, and was named a Top Retail Expert 2026 by Rethink Retail. With 25+ years across Nike, adidas, Diesel, Sneakerboy and Westfield, he works with startups, mid-size brands and enterprise clients on emotionally intelligent brand strategy, consumer psychology and AI's role in retail.
Work with Nick at iguglobal.com.
FAQ
Why is Qantas cutting 850 jobs?
Qantas told staff on 10 November 2026 that around 850 roles will be affected over the coming years under a multi-year partnership with Accenture. The changes start in finance, procurement, people and marketing, with some work moving to Accenture teams mostly in India, and the first changes expected by mid-2027.
Will offshoring jobs hurt the Qantas brand?
Probably not in bookings straight away. The more likely cost is the benefit of the doubt. Qantas has been chosen on a feeling for decades, and decisions like this shift customers from choosing the brand to simply staying with it, which shows up later in the price premium and in how quickly frustration turns into anger.
Why didn't Coles get the same backlash for its Accenture deal?
Coles is a cognitive default, chosen on habit and convenience, so moving back-office work doesn't touch what customers buy from it. Qantas is chosen for a feeling, so the same decision costs it more.
Why did the Qantas share price rise after the job cuts?
Markets price cost savings the day they're announced. The brand cost lags. It shows up later, in a smaller price premium and in customers who stop giving the airline the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong.
What is an emotional default?
An emotional default is the brand a customer chooses for the feeling attached to it rather than on price or convenience. Repeating that same feeling over time builds a reputation, until choosing the brand stops being a decision at all.
Related reading: Whatever You Do as a Brand Compounds. For Better or Worse. · It Was Always the Feeling: A Mondial by Nadia Case Study