By Shivansh Tiwary, Chris Thomas and Nandan Mandayam

NEW DELHI, June 5 (Reuters) -

Indian airlines are expected to post a bigger industry-wide

loss in fiscal 2025 as higher costs outweigh rising demand and

costlier tickets, a top aviation consultancy said on Wednesday.

CAPA India estimated losses for the year ending March 2025

at between $400 million to $600 million. The industry reported a

loss of $300 million - $400 million the previous year, helped by

market leader IndiGo's record profit.

Overall airline costs are expected to rise 3.8% in the

fiscal year 2025, the consultancy added. It did not say how much

they rose last year.

India is currently the world's fastest-growing aviation

market with demand surpassing the supply of planes.

That has helped the industry report record yields as

carriers charge higher fares due to a capacity crunch, resulting

in more packed planes, measured in passenger load factor (PLF).

CAPA said it expects the trend of record yields - the

average amount paid by a passenger to fly one kilometre - to

continue in the short term and sees a roughly 1% rise for fiscal

2025. It pegged PLF at 85% for the same period.

However, the crunch would be eased with an addition of

84 aircraft in the current year, taking airlines' overall fleet

- including grounded jets - to 812 from 728 as of March, CAPA

India CEO Kapil Kaul said at the consultancy's annual summit.

Airlines' fleet size will more than double by 2030, he said.

India's skies are dominated by low-cost carrier IndiGo

, which holds a 60% market share. The Air India group,

which houses two budget carriers and two full-service carriers

in Air India and Vistara, have a roughly 30% share.

Together, they have over a thousand aircraft on order from

Airbus and Boeing ( BA ).

CAPA India estimated domestic passenger traffic to grow to

161 million to 164 million from about 154 million. The

consultancy sees international traffic growing to 75 million to

78 million.