A brave air stewardess helped save 31 people from a 40 dead in Russian plane fireball after 'evacuation delayed by passengers getting hand luggage' by grabbing passengers by their collars and flinging them on to escape chutes.
Tragically 41 people – including two children – died as the Russian airliner made an emergency landing at a Moscow airport.
Among the dead was an air steward who stayed at his post at the rear of the jet trying to evacuate passengers.
Eyewitnesses say the plane bounced off the tarmac and hung airborne before falling to the ground seconds later and bursting into flames.
40 dead in Russian plane fireball after 'evacuation delayed by passengers getting hand luggage'
The plane had taken off from the Russian capital for an internal flight to Murmansk but the crew reported an emergency and headed back landing 45 minutes later.
The aircraft landed with full fuel tanks because the crew lost contact with air traffic controllers and decided it was too dangerous to dump fuel over Moscow.
Aeroflot stewardess Tatyana Kasatkina, 34, kicked open the door and pushed passengers out to speed up the evacuation.
She said: “When the plane stopped, the evacuation immediately began. Everyone was shouting that we were on fire but there was no fire inside the cabin at this moment.
“I kicked the door out with my leg and pushed out the passengers so as not to slow the evacuation. Just to hurry them, I grabbed each of them by the collar from the back.
“It was all so quick. The smoke was already black. The last people were crawling to get out.”
It was reported that some passengers grabbing hand luggage from overhead lockers delayed the evacuation.
Survivor Dmitry Khlebnikov said: “I thank God – and the stewardesses who saved me.”
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One passenger Dmitry Khlebushkin, seen walking away from the plane carrying his backpack, was criticised when he complained that Aeroflot had failed to give him a refund withing 40 minutes.
Khlebushkin had praised the stewardesses for help in evacuating the plane but told Life online news: “In the end, I did not get it at all.”
