Qantas Airways, Australia's biggest airline, plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs over two years to slash costs and boost productivity, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The Australian Financial Review article, which did not name sources, said the planned cuts to Qantas's 30,000-plus work force were part of a broad review of the airline's operations.

Qantas was looking at "processes that could be removed or redesigned", a spokesman for the airline said when asked if job cuts were likely.

"Qantas will look at all processes and activities right across the group and seek greater efficiency because that is essential this capital intensive, highly competitive global business," the spokesman said.

Qantas said on February 17, when it announced a record first-half profit, that it would conduct a review of all its activities over at least three months.

"We are about two weeks into that three month review so it's clearly premature to say what the outcomes of that review will be," the Qantas spokesman said. "When it's completed we'll make a statement."

The newspaper report said the company was also reconsidering whether to spin off individual businesses such as Qantas Holidays and Qantas Catering.

"That has been talked about before, a few years ago. Qantas made it clear it was looking at those issues so it's not a surprise that there's speculation about that once again," the spokesman said.

The report said Qantas would also consider whether certain maintenance and IT divisions should be closed or sold.

Job cuts of up to 3,000 might result in Qantas having to take a one-off charge of about AUD$100 million (USD$79 million) for redundancy payments, it said.