Pay it forward’: A kind gesture from an Alaska Airlines employee has helped a stranded passenger fly home.

Following a series of delays on her outbound flight to Ontario, California, with Delta Airlines, Miriam Thomas found that her return flight to Seattle, from where she was to fly home to Vancouver, was cancelled without notice, News1130 reported.

Thomas expressed her frustration with Delta on Twitter, but the airline was unable to offer her an alternative flight until the next morning.

However, she avoided spending a night at the airport after Alaska Airlines, Delta’s partner airline, offered to help after seeing her tweets.

An hour later Thomas said she was offered a travel voucher by an Alaska Airlines employee at the airport called Judy. It took her a moment to realise that Judy was in fact paying for her return flight out of her own pocket.

“She’s filling it [the voucher] out and I thought she just had these free passes,” Thomas told News1130. “At one point her co-workers were standing behind her saying ‘Judy! Judy! You don’t have to do that.’ And she says ‘You know what, I’m paying it forward, it’s OK.’ At this point I realised something is up and she pulls out her credit card and starts putting in her credit card information.”

Judy later offered Thomas money for a coffee while she waited to board her flight.

“She paid for my ticket, she paid for me to get home. She didn’t know me at all,” added Ms Thomas. “It was amazing. She didn’t need to do that at all, she took care of me.”

Delta is still investigating the circumstances behind the cancellation of Thomas’s original return flight. The airline will also be offering Thomas a full refund for her flight, according to Brian Kruse, a Delta spokesperson.

Grateful for Judy’s kind gesture, Thomas also hopes to “pay it forward” by helping a stranger one day herself, she told Canada’ CTVNews.

The Telegraph, London

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