Airlines in the Asia Pacific region lead "absolute growth" in planned capacity levels worldwide for April, according to the latest update by aviation industry monitoring group OAG.

With more than 6.2 million additional seats and 40,203 additional published flights compared to offerings in the same month last year, the "intra-Pacific region is the clear leader" in terms of absolute growth, OAG said in its Frequency and Capacity Trend Statistics (FACTS) report for April.

The OAG report noted that over the last five years, figures within the Asia Pacific region have shown average capacity growth of 7 percent compared to the global average of 4 percent.

Peter von Moltke, chief executive officer of UBM Aviation which produces the OAG FACTS report, pointed out in the April update that Japan is "such a major influence on the world stage and no region will be immune from the effects of the devastation," apparently referring to the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant crises.

"That, along with the prevailing economic pressures and concerns about rising oil prices, are certain to impact ongoing demand," he said.

Overall, the world's airlines are offering a total of 317.4 million seats this month-the "highest ever airline capacity" for April-for an increase of 13.9 million seats or 5 percent from the same month last year, the OAG report said.

Also registering "significant growth" is the number of frequencies, said the report, with 80,653 more flights scheduled for this month showing an increase of 3 percent from the year-ago level.

The average number of seats per flight schedule, meanwhile, is seen rising by 1.25 percent this April, the FACTS report noted.

In terms of percentage growth, the volume of seats to and from the Middle East are expected to post the biggest increase of 11 percent from the previous year, although the OAG report said political events in the region will "likely have an effect" on sustaining this level of scheduled capacity.