Growth in global air travel slowed in March due to the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa and the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a newly released report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.

Passenger demand worldwide rose in March by 3.8 percent from the year before, representing a significant drop from the previous month's 5.8 percent, according to the IATA report released in Geneva by the group's director general Giovanni Bisignani.

Because the world's airlines expanded capacity by 8.6 percent during the period, the slower rise passenger traffic meant fewer passengers per flight.

The average load factor in March was 74.6 percent, down by 3.5 percentage points from the year before, said the IATA report.

Slower growth was noted in all of the world regions, with carriers in Asia Pacific experiencing the "broadest turn of fortunes" with a flat record in passenger demand and a 0.8 percent rise in capacity resulting in a sharp fall in load factors to 74.2 percent, the data indicated.

"The impact of the events in Japan on global international traffic was a one percent loss of traffic in March. Looked at regionally, Asia-Pacific carriers saw a traffic loss of over 2 percent," IATA noted in its report.

Japan's domestic market was the most severely impacted with a 22 percent fall in demand, the report said.

On the other hand, the Middle East and North Africa "disruptions," said the report, cut international travel by 0.9 percentage points.

Egypt and Tunisia experienced traffic levels 10-25 percent below normal for March while military action in Libya virtually stopped civil aviation to, from and within that country, IATA said.

Passenger demand growth in the Middle East on the whole slipped to 5.6 percent in March compared to 8.6 percent in February, with overall load factor in the region shrinking by 0.6 percentage points to 73.2 percent.

The same pattern was seen elsewhere. In Europe, carriers reported a drop in year-on-year demand growth from 7.4 percent in February to 5.3 percent in March. In North America the growth rate went down to 3.7 percent from the previous month's 6.7 percent, the report said.

Meanwhile, Latin American airlines saw a big increase of 22.2 percent in March but this was because of the severe drop in the year-ago activity owing to the earthquake in Chile at the time.

African carriers saw a drop of 7 percent in demand in March, which was an improvement over the 9.7 percent decline in the previous month, the IATA report said.