"We have commissioned a study on the various competition issues in the civil aviation sector in India. Among other things, the study will look at performance of airlines in various city pairs as well as the time slots allotted to various airlines," said Amitabha Kumar, Director General, CCI.

Industry experts said that sector and slot-specific domination would be a better way to look at market domination of a particular airline which could lead to anti- competitive practices rather than total market share of passengers carried across the country.

"While market share of an airline just shows its share of the total number of passengers carried in the country, looking at a sector-wise market might be very different. For instance, while low-cost carrier Go Air has an overall market share of 3.1 per cent, it has a disproportionately larger share of around 13 per cent in the Mumbai-Delhi sector," said an industry expert.

For instance, although the Kingfisher-Deccan combine has a market share of 27.1 per cent, its share of flights in most Bangalore-connected sectors such as  Bangalore-Mumbai, Bangalore-Hyderabad is 40-50 per cent.

The combine also has a huge advantage in terms of key flight slots out of Bangalore. For instance, in the Bangalore-Chennai sector, the combine operates 6 out of nine flights in the key business class time slots of 6-9 am and 6-9 pm. Similarly, the combine operates around 7 out of around 13 flights in the key morning and evening slots in the Bangalore-Hyderabad sector.

In the Delhi-Mumbai sector, the Jet Airways-Jet Lite combine has a market share of around 25 per cent, which is close to its overall market share of around 29 per cent. However, the carrier operates almost 35-40 per cent of the business schedule slots in this sector. which is the single-largest revenue contributor for an airline in the country. On the other hand, Go Air has most of the flights in the daytime and afternoon slots.

Also, the Jet-JetLite combine has a share of almost 50 per cent in west Indian markets such as Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-Indore.