Established in 1984 as Commuter Operations Department, a business unit of SAS, it initially flew minor services out of Copenhagen using a fleet of nine Fokker F27 Friendships.

SAS Commuter became the launch customer of the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 in January 2000, which over the next two years replaced the Eurolink Fokkers and the Saabs.

However, from April 2003 SAS Commuter took over former Braathens routes in Western Norway, operated under the Westlink brand.

[3] SAS therefore decided to subcontract the operation of some of its international and domestic services to Busy Bee and Swedair, starting in 1982.

[4] The move was met with fierce opposition from the pilots unions, who threatened to "boycott" the decision by continuing to land aircraft on the former routes.

[5] After pressure from the pilots' union, SAS decided on 7 March 1984 to establish the Commuter Operations Department (COD) as a business unit.

SAS terminated its agreements with Busy Bee and Swedair prematurely in order to insource the operations.

[8] The old aircraft, built between 1967 and 1969, were unpopular with the customers because of low comfort, high noise levels and many technical problems.

[7] SAS announced in October 1986 that they intended to replace their commuter fleet with a newer aircraft type.

[13] SAS was flying what they considered local routes with DC-9s, others were flown at high costs by Widerøe using de Havilland Canada Dash 7s.

[19] SAS cut eleven daily services in January 1991,[20] and followed up with a further seventeen —a twenty percent reduction—in October.

[21] Negotiations were started between SAS and Braathens SAFE in late 1991 concerning a merger of the two group's regional airlines in Norway.

In what was proposed to be called Norwegian Commuter, Norlink and Busy Bee would pool their regional operations.

This was in part due to the Norwegian Armed Forces going over to buying commercial flights and thus more direct services with DC-9s and MD-80s.

[24] By the end of 1992, SAS estimated they had lost NOK 250 million on Norlink in isolation, although the commuter services generated significant profitable revenue for the jetliner routes.

The main area of operation were smaller domestic services out of Arlanda, Kalmar, Karlstad, Kristianstad, Ronneby, Skellefteå and Växjö.

One issue was false alarms created by the cockpit software, while oil leaks caused for engines to have to be replaced.

[33] By October there had been nine emergency landings caused by various technical faults, and SAS Commuter chose to ground the aircraft for several days.

[31] Following a period of intense price war and huge losses, the SAS Group was given permission to buy its main domestic competitor Braathens in late 2001.

[35] Braathens' regional services in Western Norway were at the time operated by the subcarrier Norwegian Air Shuttle.

SAS therefore agreed to pay Norwegian NOK 65 million cash to terminate the routes from 1 April 2003.

[26] Widerøe, who have lower wage costs and economies of scale derived from other regional operation in Norway, had planned the take-over of the Westlink routes in the mid-2000s.

This had however been canceled after an employee at the SAS Group, not knowing about Widerøe's plans, had renewed the lease of the Fokker 50s for another five years.

[39] In its last full year of operation, 2003, SAS Commuter had a revenue of SEK 2.5 billion, making a loss of between 100 and 200 million.