Tromsø. Also a service to Andøya Airport, Andenes was taken over by Widerøe in the early 1970s. By 1975 the airport handled 214,135 passengers. The increased traffic caused congestion in the terminal building, leading to the construction the a new terminal. Opened in 1977, it was nicknamed "the banana" due to its crescent shape. The terminal was renovated and expanded in 1985. Norving established Tromsø's first international route in June 1979, to Kiruna Airport in Sweden using a Cessna 441 Conquest. Until 1982 it was flown with a SAS flight code. The airline established a second international route in May 1983 to Rovaniemi Airport in Finland. The following year Luleå Airport was added to the route. These routes lasted until 1986. Norving had a requiem on a route to Luleå and Oulu Airport starting 2 September 1991, although it only lasted until April 1992. Petroleum prospecting in the Barents Sea commenced in 1980 and Tromsø was chosen as the helicopter base for this activity. Helikopter Service built a hangar and base at Langnes. They operated until 1984, when Lufttransport took over the operations and moved it to Andøya. SAS Commuter was established in 1988. SAS then reorganized its routes, so that the Oslo flights terminated at Tromsø instead of continuing onwards to Finnmark. Meanwhile, more regional services in Finnmark were geared towards Alta Airport and the services from Tromsø to the primary airports in Finnmark were taken over by SAS Commuter using the Fokker 50. Patronage at the airport grew steadily until 1985, when it had 794,480 passengers. Then the pax remained steady until 1992. It then rose quickly for four years, hitting 1,413,610 in 1996. Since the ridership has remained steady. Busy Bee went bankrupt in 1992 and Norwegian Air Shuttle took over Braathens SAFE's regional routes. Braathens SAFE and Aeroflot introduced flights to Murmansk Airport in Russia from 1993, and same year SAS started flights to London. The domestic aviation market was deregulated on 1 April 1994. This led Braathens to establish two direct flights per day to Oslo, for the first time competing with SAS on the same route out of Tromsø. Meanwhile, SAS Commuter started services to Bodø and Trondheim. The Banana was becoming too small and the CAA initiated a major upgrade program to the airport. The runway was extended in 1995 and the following year a new control tower opened. The new terminal building