As ferocious flames and thick, black clouds of smoke engulfed the outside of the plane, all hell was breaking loose inside.
The fuel-laden Russian Aeroflot Sukhoi SSJ100 Superjet had been struck by lightning as it took off from a Moscow airport in a hailstorm Sunday and returned for an emergency landing — skidding on the runway and erupting in a deadly fireball.
Amid the mayhem were fliers who wasted precious time grabbing their bags and belongings, blocking the aisle and hampering the escape of those in the rear, witnesses and authorities said.
One portly passenger, Dmitry Khlebushkin, was accused of blocking the aisle while stopping to get his backpack. Video footage surfaced of him strolling from the scene with it strapped to him.
Khlebushkin even groused about not getting an immediate refund for the flight, according to the Daily Mail.
Video taken from inside the aircraft shows terrified passengers looking out windows completely obscured by orange flames and screaming for help.
“Everyone to the exit!’’ one man shouted.
Flight attendant Tatyana Kasatkina, 34, said no one waited for the jet to come to a stop.
“The plane was still moving at a good speed’’ as people started jumping up and rushing forward, she told The Sun of Britain.
Some passengers slid down the jet’s front emergency chute with everything from their umbrellas to rolling luggage.
Kasatkina said she was so frustrated by people grabbing their things from the overhead bins that she yanked some by the neck and all but tossed them down the slide.
“I kicked the door out with my leg and pushed out the passengers so as not to slow the evacuation,” Kasatkina said. “Just to hurry them up, I grabbed each of them by the collar from the back . . . The last people were crawling to get out.”
Doomed flight attendant Maxim Moiseyev died trying to help those in the back escape, witnesses said.
Moiseyev, a military vet, struggled to open the rear door amid the flames, and when he didn’t have any luck, he began directing people to the emergency slide up ahead, heroically refusing to leave until all the passengers in front of him were safely out, according to the witnesses.
Fueling the blaze were the jet’s full tanks, authorities said. It didn’t help that no emergency crews appeared to be on standby at Sheremetyevo Airport, or at least didn’t immediately rush to the flaming jet when it landed.
Among those killed was Jeremy Brooks, 22, a fishing instructor from Santa Fe, NM. He had just graduated from college and taken a job in Murmansk, Russia, where the plane was headed.
Brooks “was in the back of the plane, and apparently the fire started on the other side of the aisle where he was sitting,’’ a pal, Koa Forese, told The Post.
Both of the aircraft’s “black boxes” have been recovered, officials said.
More than 4,000 people have signed a petition to ban the Russian-made plane in the wake of eight safety incidents in the past year.
But the country’s transport minister, who is heading the commission probing the tragedy, said for now, he didn’t see any reason to stop Superjet flights.
About 150 of the planes have been sold after being developed in 2011 by the fighter-jet maker Sukhoi with government support and consultation with Boeing.
