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Australian carrier Qantas Airways Ltd. is closing its Tucson call center and cutting 1,500 jobs worldwide due to rising fuel costs and changing economic pressures, the company announced today.

The airline will close call centers in Tucson and London, concentrating that activity in Australia and New Zealand. In Tucson about 80 employees will be affected, Qantas spokeswoman Holly Williams said in an e-mail.

Qantas also canceled plans to hire an additional 1,200 employees after deciding not to implement its budgeted flight growth in the coming fiscal year. The aviation industry is facing a major crisis worldwide, and Qantas needed to act decisively to ensure its future, said CEO Geoff Dixon, according to a news release.

The announcement comes a little more than a month after Intuit Inc. announced plans to lay off about 150 people who provide phone support for customers at its Tucson call center.

The company, which provides financial software such as TurboTax and QuickBooks, plans to lay off more than 10 percent of its Tucson work force, said Diane Carlini, Intuit corporate communications manager.

Jim Mize, the director of Pima County's career-development service center, One Stop, said the area would likely be able to absorb those employees who are laid off from call centers but want to stay in that kind of job.

Some companies have expressed interest in moving to the Tucson area, he said. Other companies already here are expanding their call centers.

For example, Afni Inc., one of Tucson's largest call-center employers, recently opened a new 53,000-square-foot facility at North La Cholla Boulevard and West River Road with plans to add 200 new positions to the nearly 1,600 it already has in Tucson.

That would make it the company's largest call center, said marketing manager Alan Angelo. Afni is a provider of call-center, collections and insurance services.