 Widerøe introduced the de Havilland Canada Dash 7 on the route from Tromsø Airport to Hammerfest in 1983, the same year as Norving started flights from Hammerfest to Hasvik Airport. The Hasvik roue was taken over by Widerøe in 1990. Helikopter Service established a helicopter base at Hammerfest Airport in 1989 to serve the offshore petroleum industry which was searching for oil in the Barents Sea. Widerøe introduced the Dash 8 on the Finnmark routes in 1995. The airport was taken over by the state and the Civil Aviation Administration (later renamed Avinor) on 1 January 1997. The state paid Hammerfest Municipality 19.5 million Norwegian krone (NOK) in compensation. The routes eastwards were made subject to public service obligations with the Ministry of Transport and Communications from 1 April 1997. The routes to Tromsø had a sufficient patronage that they were operated without subsidies.
