XINING - China began building a new civil airport in northwestern Qinghai province Friday to link the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau closer with the country's inland areas.

Huatugou Airport, in the Mongolian-Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Haixi, is one of three new regional airports to be built in Qinghai before 2020, said Yang Yang, deputy chief of the provincial development and reform commission.

Construction of the 700-million yuan ($111 million) airport will be completed by the end of 2013, and the airport will start operation in June 2014, Yang said.

Huatugou Airport will have a 3,600-meter-long runway and will handle flights to the provincial capital of Xining, the cities of Golmud and Delingha in Qinghai, the city of Dunhuang in neighboring Gansu Province, and Korla in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

By 2020, the airport will handle 90,000 passenger trips annually.

The airport, at an altitude of 2,945 meters, is located in a resource-rich region at the juncture of Qinghai and Xinjiang. It is close to a major crude oil production base.

"The new airport will provide stronger logistic support for exploiting natural resources," said Cheng Zhuzu, executive vice president of China West Airport Group. "It will help expand the air traffic network on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau."

Two more regional airports, one in Haixi's city of Delingha and the other in Dawo town of the Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Golog, will be operational by 2020, Cheng said.