and Kirkenes Airport also opened the same day, while Tromsø Airport opened the following year. Several important facilities were missing from Alta Airport when it opened; the control tower and the passenger terminal were not completed until 1964, so at first a shed was used as terminal. Operational history Services were at first operated by Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). At the beginning the airline used 56-passenger Convair CV-440 Metropolitan aircraft, which flew flights south to Oslo and westward to Lakselv and Kirkenes—and also to Tromsø starting in 1964. The general route scheme of flying multi-legged flights from Oslo to Finnmark remained until 1990. On 7 April 1969, SAS introduced the 85-passenger Douglas DC-9-21 jetliner on the Alta service; the last Metropolitan flew on 1 April 1970. Five regional airports opened on 1 August 1974, Sørkjosen, Hammerfest, Mehamn, Berlevåg and Vadsø, all which were connected to Alta and other primary airports by Widerøe using de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otters. Honningsvåg Airport opened on 1 July 1977. SAS' traffic increased throughout the 1970s, resulting in SAS gradually increasing the frequency of its services, and later also using larger DC-9s. The McDonnell Douglas MD-80 was first flown on the Alta route on 11 July 1986. 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. Activity at Alta Airport peaked in the following years. SAS served Alta with up to ten daily services; at peak hours six aircraft were at the airport simultaneously, including two from Widerøe. From 1992, SAS reintroduced direct services from Kirkenes to Oslo, and aircraft in eastern Finnmark again started feeding into Kirkenes. The hub paradigm was thus gradually abandoned by SAS. Flights at Alta gradually decreased, hitting a low of 4,935 movements (landings and take-offs) in 2000. The North Cape Tunnel opened in 1999, connecting Honningsvåg and