A senior citizen has been left close to $700 out of pocket after Air Canada cancelled her direct flight from Bermuda to Toronto and said she would have to fly through London to keep her booking.

Carole Figueiredo, 75, who wrote a Letter to the Editor about the ordeal in today’s paper, said she had also wasted nine hours waiting to speak to a representative of the airline on the phone.

She told The Royal Gazette: “The whole process has been super stressful to the point that I almost cancelled my visit to my friend in Canada.”

Air Canada has since admitted that the alternate routing should not have been offered to the customer, an admission made after the Letter to the Editor was sent.

Ms Figueiredo had originally booked a return ticket to Toronto Pearson International Airport from Bermuda leaving on July 31 and returning on August 9.

However, after she had booked the flight she received an e-mail from Air Canada saying that owing to “unexpected business and operational constraints” her outbound flight would now have to divert through London, Heathrow where she would have a four hour wait adding an extra day to her itinerary.

What’s more, the airline said if she did not accept the London route, it would cancel her entire booking.

The e-mail said: “We’re sorry as one of your flights has a revised time due to unexpected business or operational constraints on our planned flight schedule.

“This change also affects any customers you are travelling with on this booking …

“If you do not show up for your flight, the rest of your itinerary will automatically be cancelled.”

Ms Figueiredo said she decided to book a flight from Bermuda to Toronto with WestJet costing her an additional $580.

However, she was so concerned about her return flight with Air Canada being cancelled if she did not take the flight they had offered her via London that she tried to contact the airline.

Ms Figueiredo told The Royal Gazette: “You try calling but you just get a message saying that due to weather in the US and Canada, your wait will be longer.

“When I went online, there was no way of my changing the flight from Bermuda to Toronto.

“In desperation, I spent another almost $600 and booked a one-way ticket to Toronto on WestJet.”

Ms Figueiredo never reached an Air Canada representative on the phone.

However, the original e-mail she received with the London routing said she could cancel the booking and the airline could either deposit the full amount she had paid for the original trip on to a “wallet” and she could use it for a future Air Canada flight, or she could receive half of the cost back in her bank account.

She decided to accept the funds on the wallet but was docked $100 for a service fee.

Regardless, she rebooked the return journey using the remaining funds on the wallet.

A spokesman for Air Canada said yesterday: “We have looked into this booking and while alternate routings are automatically generated for schedule changes, this alternate routing should not have been offered.

“We have since issued a refund as the customer cancelled the alternate routing.”

Ms Figueiredo said: “I lost almost $700 and, yes, that is difficult as I am a senior citizen.

“That is less of a problem than the anxiety I went through during the whole process. Even if I booked on some other airline how was I going to get back?

“I cancelled the whole thing and had to very quickly book a flight back on Air Canada which was stressful in itself as there was only eight seats left.

"The worst part of all was having my phone on speakerphone hour after hour as the music repeated over and over yet I could not get hold of a human being to talk to them.“