'My journey from hell - plane hit by lightning, family on the run and border drama'

dailystar.co.uk:

Gatwick.The thing about a good old fashioned holiday from hell is that you don't actually realise you're embroiled in one until you're 12-hours deep.Despite a stoic 'everything will work out soon' next time you look you're stuck in a storm, hit by lightning (twice), marooned in Albania and throwing stones at a window to wake up your AirBnB hosts.READ NEXT: 'I avoided visiting places my husband went with his ex – but now embrace it'We’d thought we’d already weathered a nightmare of a storm when the flight that was supposed to leave at 10 finally took off at 12.I should have seen the red flags slapping me in the face when the check-in desk manned by one flustered bloke didn’t start processing passengers until 10 minutes after the gate was supposed to have closed.But then, he probably wasn't aware he had to load the W9 5761 from Gatwick to Podgorica all by himself.The upshot of one fella doing the job of three is that the plane was over an hour past its 10am take off slot - and the rain lashing down outside matched our mood on board.That delay (there will be more of them) on the runway meant another 40 minutes waiting for a slot through the storm.Once we were up it was a pretty uneventful flight.

Until we got hit by lightning... twice.In fact one was just next to me on the left-hand wing. I saw a flash, a slight jolt to the plane and a loudish bang.A few passengers were shocked but many - including me - forgot about it until a fateful message from the captain an hour or so later."We're just passing the Croatian coast," he said. "One thing that may be of interest is that we're no longer landing in Podgorica.