Mayor de Blasio claimed on Sunday that he rushed back from the campaign trail in Iowa to deal with the Manhattan blackout — by driving four hours to Chicago, where he spent the night and then appeared on CNN before hopping a plane home.

City Hall wouldn’t say what flight Hizzoner took from the Windy City but admitted that he touched down in New York City shortly before 12:30 p.m. Sunday — nearly 13 hours after power was restored.

Appearing from Chicago on CNN’s 9 a.m. “State of the Union” talk show, de Blasio maintained he was in control of the city when the blackout struck, even though he had been stumping for votes in Waterloo, Iowa.

“When you’re a mayor or a governor, you’re going to travel for a variety of reasons,” he said.

“The important thing is to have the hand on the wheel, make sure things are moving effectively and communicate to people. Even from where I was, I was able to do that right away with the people in New York City.”

Hours later, de Blasio repeatedly insisted he headed back to the Big Apple once he realized the power outage wouldn’t be fixed right away.

“I want people to understand that [in] this job, and [as] any public CEO today, you have to take charge where you are, and I did that,” he said at an Upper West Side news conference.

“But in terms of the decision, as soon as it became clear we did not have an immediately resolvable crisis, I started moving.”

De Blasio grew testy when pressed by reporters about his absence and the accolades heaped on Council Speaker Corey Johnson for his handling of the blackout.

“So you’re asking the same question in different ways,” the mayor said.

“So I’ll just answer: I’m really happy. I’ve worked very closely with Speaker Johnson. I think he did a great job yesterday. Every one of us is going to do what we can do.”

On Saturday night, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ripped de Blasio over his absence.

“Mayors are important, and situations like this come up, you know, and you have to be on site,” he told CNN.

Cuomo followed up on Sunday, telling 1010 WINS radio, “I was on the ground . . . What the mayor does is up to the mayor, and I’ll leave it to him and the people of New York to decide who should do what when.”