Australia's Qantas Airways confirmed the occurrence of a cyber incident at one of its contact centres on Wednesday, impacting customer data.

The company said the breach occurred when a cybercriminal targeted a call centre and accessed a third-party customer servicing platform.

Qantas said the platform contains around six million customers with service records, but did not mention whether the accounts were also based outside Australia.

The initial review confirmed the data includes some customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and frequent flyer numbers, however, financial information such as credit card details, and separately, passport details are not held in the affected system.

"We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant," Qantas said in a statement.

"No frequent flyer accounts were compromised nor have passwords, PIN numbers or log in details been accessed," it added.

The airline said that the system is currently contained, with no effect on its operations or the safety of the airline.

The company has also notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, along with alerting the Australian Federal Police, "given the criminal nature of this incident." (Reuters)