Launching an airline on leap day Feb. 29 means subsequent anniversaries will always require a little extra explanation.

For instance, Calgary-based WestJet started flying Feb. 29, 1996, which is why the airline's 25th anniversary is today, March 1, 2021, simply because there was no Feb. 29 this year.

With the leap day and leap year lesson over, we can get to the real business of wishing WestJet a happy birthday.

Two-and-a-half decades ago, the upstart airline began operations with three second-hand 737 jets and five destinations — Kelowna, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.

That first day, WestJet flew into Kelowna mid-morning from Vancouver and then the same plane took off shortly thereafter for Calgary.

Since then, and pre-COVID in 2019, WestJet had grown to 300 million passengers served, 100 destinations in 23 countries and 180 aircraft.

While WestJet retains the name befitting its Western Canada roots (and routes), it is now truly an international airline.

WestJet also flies between Penticton and Calgary.

"WestJet made Kelowna far more accessible," said Kelowna International Airport director Sam Samaddar.

"Prior to 1996 airfares in and out of Kelowna were expensive (and annual airport passenger counts were about 350,000). WestJet and its low fares pushed fares down across the board and started to put rubber tire traffic (those that usually would drive from Kelowna to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria) up in the air."

WestJet started a movement that catapulted a 25% traffic increase at Kelowna airport in 1997 and 60% in 1998.

In fact, passenger counts at the airport would climb year over year to a record two million annually in 2018 and 2019, prior to the pandemic.

In those years, WestJet had the largest market share at Kelowna airport and accounted for about 65% of the traffic and passengers in and out of the airport.

"WestJet has been so positive for the Kelowna market," said Samaddar.

"It not only provided the competition to lower fares, but added destinations."

Pre-COVID, WestJet had an impressive list of destinations from Kelowna — Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg,Toronto, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Cancun.

Currently, with pandemic-related travel restrictions, WestJet is flying a reduced schedule from Kelowna to Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

"Airline travel has been given a much harder ride during COVID than it should have," said Samaddar.

"Less than 1% of transmission is attributed to travel and 93% is local community transmission. However, air travel has been clamped down. With the vaccine rollout, all airlines are poised to bounce back. But there's still uncertainty and consumer confidence to be built back, so it will probably be 2024 or 2025 before we have all the destinations and passengers return to pre-COVID levels."

WestJet started as a private company under CEO Clive Beddoe and a group of Calgary-based investors.

In 1999, it became a publicly traded company with stock trading on the TSX (Toronto).

In 2019, it became a private company again when Toronto-based private equity firm Onex purchased the airline for $5 billion.

The airline has created a special video commemorating its silver anniversary at WestJet.com.