Good Samaritan Gives Away Frequent Flier Miles To Help People Go Home For Holidays

In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, a New York man has given away his frequent flier miles to five lucky strangers so that they can go home for the holidays. Entrepreneur Peter Shankman announced the five winners - selected from a pool of 400 - of his third annual "Home for the Holidays" campaign on Imgur, an online image sharing community website.

"For the third year in a row: If you can't afford to go home for the holidays, I'd like to use my miles to get you home," Mr Shankman wrote while sharing details of the campaign on Imgur.

In his post, Mr Shankman explains that as a corporate keynote speaker, he gets to travel a lot - "about 250-300k miles each year" - and so he rakes up a lot of frequent flier miles.

"See, I'm not rich, I'm not famous, but I do have one unique resource at my disposal. All my travel means I have a LOT of frequent flier miles. Like, a LOT."

"And the last thing I want to do with all those miles is when I'm finally home is actually go somewhere. But there are only so many times I can give a free flight to my assistant and her boyfriend or my parents."

According to Fox News, winners are decided through peer voting by the Imgur community. This year, the winners include a mother who will visit the grave of her son, an Army veteran, and a woman who will travel to see her ailing grandfather.

Mr Shankman's initiative has been widely-appreciated on social media. "Every year this restores my faith in humanity," writes one Imgur user. "God bless you, brother. This is the true spirit of Christmas and I'm sure this will mean so much to someone who desperately needs it," says another.