“I’d heard two loud bangs, turned my head and saw two large flashes somewhere around the engine,” Vladimir Yevmenkov told TASS, describing the moment when the jet was allegedly hit by lightning shortly after takeoff.

The pilots on Sunday made a decision to return to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, but the emergency landing went wrong as the plane bounced after connecting with the runway and its rear section burst into flames.

Yevmenkov says it was “the second contact with the ground” that caused the engine to catch fire.

The ill-fated flight SU 1492 of Russia’s flagship carrier Aeroflot was traveling from Moscow to the northern Russian city of Murmansk. Yevmenkov is the head of Severomorsk, a port city on the Barents Sea in the Murmansk Region, which hosts the main base of the Russian Northern Fleet.

The mayor recalled that the evacuation from the burning plane went in a calm fashion, with stewards working to save the passengers in a professional manner.

“The people were standing in the isle, allowing those ahead of them to exit… If everybody rushed at the same time, we would’ve all fallen down and killed each other.”

He wasn’t aware, however, that dozens were doomed to die in the tail of the plane. Yevmenkov said he “didn’t feel the smell of burning, didn’t know what was going on at the back of the plane” where the fatalities occurred.

The evacuation happened in almost complete darkness, as the lighting had switched off and only little light was coming from the windows and the open exits, he said.

There were 78 people aboard the Superjet-100, with 37 of them surviving and 41 others perishing. Reports suggest that one of the crew, steward Maxim Moiseev, lost his life in an attempt to open the rear door of the aircraft to speed up the evacuation.

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