China's second Tibetan-dominated area plans to build its first airport in a bid to improve its link with other part of the country and overseas.

Rao Sidan, head of the Garze Tibetan Prefecture of Sichuan Province, Southwest China, said the planned Kangding Airport will be 38 km from the county seat of Kangding County with an altitude of 4,200 meters.

Rao said the airport will be the second highest after Bamda Airport in Tibet Autonomous Region, which stands at about 4,300 meters in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Total expenditure for the airport is estimated at 800 million yuan (US$96.66 million), said the official.

Zhang Zhongwei, governor of Sichuan Province, told Sichuan provincial legislature earlier this year that Sichuan is trying to begin the construction this year.

Rao said the planned airport will boost local social and economic development of the prefecture after its completion as the prefecture is trying to attract tourists from other parts of the country and overseas.

The airport is important for the hilly prefecture, which is 150,000 sq km but has a population of only 900,000, because it is difficult to reach the area by road.

Located in Hengduan mountainous region in eastern part of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Garze is rich in tourism resources.

The region has been the core of the ecological tourism zone known as Great Shangri-La promoted at home and abroad by Sichuan and neighboring Yunnan Province and Tibet Autonomous Region.

Shangri-La, which is famous for snow-topped mountains, vast plateau meadows, traditional folk arts and harmonious relationship between man and nature, was made famous after it was described in the novel of "Lost Horizon" written by British writer James Hilton in 1933.

Garze is home of world-famous Kangding Love Song and Tibetan hero King Gesser, and a 10-million-word Tibetan epic portraying the legendary hero Gesser, the longest of its kind in the world.