SAS Commuter was established in 1988 and started operations in Northern Norway in May 1990, making Alta its central hub for Finnmark. This involved a change to the operations so that all DC-9 services from Alta to Oslo were flown non-stop. Conversely, all services to airports in Northern Norway were flown using the smaller Fokker 50. Thus SAS was able to reduce costs by no longer operating local routes with the DC-9/MD-80 and instead increased the number of flights. The change made Alta the only airport in Finnmark with direct services to Oslo. From 1989 to 1990, the number of annual aircraft movements at Alta hiked from 7,711 to 10,035.