Lufthansa Group has seen its net losses widen to €459 million for the first quarter of financial 2013, up from €394 million from the same period last year.

Much of the difference comes from redundancy payments related to its SCORE restructuring programme.

Total revenue in the ‘traditionally weak’ first quarter remained flat at €6.63 billion, while operating loss was also unchanged, at €359 million.

The operating loss included €64 million costs related to SCORE.

As part of SCORE, the group implemented around 800 measures in 2012 to improve earnings and cut costs.

These included making better use of synergies in purchasing, coordinating flight plans between airlines in the group, adjusting capacities and lowering staff costs through more efficient processes in administrative areas.

Operating expenses rose by 1.7 per cent to €7.7 billion, with fuel costs up 2.2 per cent at €1.7 billion.

Simone Menne, member of the executive board responsible for finances and aviation services, said: “We took another step towards our target of sustainable earnings improvements in the first quarter.

“Nearly all the group companies improved their result. We are firmly on course with our SCORE programme.”

The first quarter operating loss for the Passenger Airline Group, which includes Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, SWISS and Austrian Airlines, improved to €363 million from €427 million, on flat revenue of €5.07 billion.

Lufthansa Group now expects operating profit for 2013 to be higher than the €524 million achieved last year.