Chengdu Tianfu International Airport starts construction on Friday in Lujia township, Jianyang, Chengdu, Sichuan province. [Photo by Peng Chao/chinadaily.com.cn]

Construction of Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, a new airport in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, began on Friday in Lujia township, 50 kilometers southeast of downtown Chengdu.

With total investment of 71.86 billion yuan ($11.7 billion), it is expected to be completed in 2019 and start operating in 2020, according to Pan Gangjun, general manager of Sichuan Province Airport Group Co Ltd.

He said during the first phase three runways will be built, with annual capacity to handle 320,000 flights, 40 million passengers and 700,000 metric tons of cargo by 2025.

The long-term target for the airport is to have six runways, with annual capacity to handle 90 million passengers and 2 million metric tons of cargo, he said.

Wang Dongming, party chief of Sichuan province, said Chengdu is the third city on Chinese mainland to have a second international airport, after Beijing and Shanghai.

“The new airport will provide Sichuan with an express entry to integrate into the world economy, and enables the province to strengthen its strategic status in the country’s economic development and opening up to the world,” he said.

Zhang Xicheng, assistant to the general manager of the Sichuan Province Airport Group Co Ltd, said the new airport would serve international passenger routes and most of the international cargo routes, while the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport would handle domestic flights and some of the international cargo routes.

Liu Yi, deputy chief architect of China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Co Ltd, designer of the Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, said the new airport will be connected to a highly advanced land transportation system, including highways, subways and high-speed rail, which will easily transfer passengers and cargo to destinations around Chengdu and the neighboring cities.

The subway that will connect the new airport with the downtown will travels as fast as 140 km/h, with a one-way trip taking only 30 minutes, he said.

Chengdu has seen sharp increase in air traffic in recent years.

The Shuangliu airport is the fourth busiest airport on Chinese mainland. It handled 42 million passengers in 2015, an increase of 12.1 percent year-on-year, according to statistics released by Civil Aviation Administration of China.