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Home / Business / Companies / Airlines

Qantas cyber attack: Chief executive punished with $278k pay cut

John Weekes
By John Weekes
Senior Business Reporter·NZ Herald·
5 Sep, 2025 02:39 AM2 mins to read

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Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson. Photo / Qantas

Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson. Photo / Qantas

The Qantas board is making airline executives pay after a major data breach compromised millions of customers’ details.

Data for about 5.7 million customers was compromised in the breach in late June.

The cyber attack has sparked threats of litigation, complaints from customers, and debates about the retention of customer data in offshore contact centres.

In its 2025 annual report, delivered to the Australian Securities Exchange today, the company said chief executive Vanessa Hudson’s pay would be docked.

The board said due to the large number of customers involved and the importance of security, it would drop its score for the company’s performance.

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That rating was used to assess incentives for Hudson and the executive team, which would now be cut by 15%.

This had the effect of reducing the CEO’s pay by A$250,000 ($278,000), and the total reduction for others in executive management was $612,000.

“This decision demonstrates our commitment to creating a culture of accountability and ownership,” Qantas chair John Mullen said.

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The airline said management took immediate steps to contain the incident.

On July 17, an injunction was obtained from a New South Wales court.

The airline said the injunction prevented the stolen data from being accessed, viewed, released, used, transmitted or published by anyone, including third parties.

Qantas said today it was still learning from the incident and working to increase its resilience.

The compromised data included 1.3 million residential or business addresses, including hotels for misplaced baggage delivery.

Some four million customer records stolen in the attack contained names, email addresses and Qantas Frequent Flyer numbers.

Meal preferences for 10,000 customers were also stolen.

Qantas Group last week said it made a $1.78 billion profit in the latest financial year, up 28% on a year earlier.

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John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation and courts. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.

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