Aug. 3: Sliding down the evacuation chute and touching the tarmac, Sharon Maryam Sharji looked back and saw "the whole plane catch fire."

"It was actually really terrifying. As we were landing there was smoke coming out in the cabin," said Sharji, one of the 300 people on board the Emirates flight that burst into flames after landing at Dubai International Airport today.

"People were screaming and we had a very hard landing. We left by going down the emergency slides and as we were leaving on the runway, we could see the whole plane catch fire; it was horrifying," Sharji told Reuters.

The 282 passengers and 18-member crew had taken off from the Kerala capital, Thiruvananthapuram, in the morning and landed in Dubai around 12.50pm local time.

The carrier's chairman, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, said in Dubai that 14 people were admitted to hospitals with mainly minor or moderate injuries.

Initial reports said the plane had crash-landed and exploded. A passenger said the fire, probably in an engine, was noticed after the plane had touched down.

Abraham Thomas, a businessman who was on board, said over phone from Dubai that "the landing was normal and the fire was noticed only after the plane touched down". He repeated his version when told that some reports had said the plane had crash-landed.

It was not clear whether the landing gear was extended when the aircraft touched the ground. A family of passengers who declined to be named said the equipment did not deploy and the jet landed on its belly.

A catastrophe was averted as all those on board managed to escape before the aircraft burst into flames. No fatality was reported from the scene, Renjini, an Emirates spokesperson, said over phone from Delhi.

As many as 74 foreigners from 19 countries, including holidaymakers from the UK and the US, were among the passengers. "This is the time of the year when foreigners arrive in Kerala on chartered tours and to take advantage of the ayurveda season," Alex Pappachan, business development manager with travel company Air Travel Enterprises, said.

The Indians on board totalled 226. Many are Malayalis, for whom Dubai is the New York of the East and a source of endless opportunities and livelihood. Several lost their baggage and documents, including passports, in the plane fire.

All arrivals and departures at Dubai International were suspended. The government's media office later said flights resumed at 18.30 local time (8pm IST) with priority given to larger aircraft.

According to air traffic control recordings cited by Aviation Herald, a respected independent website monitoring air accidents, controllers at Dubai reminded the crew of the Boeing 777 to lower the landing gear as it came into approach.

Shortly afterwards, the crew announced they were aborting the landing to "go around", a routine procedure for which pilots are well trained. But the aircraft came to rest near the end of the runway instead, Aviation Herald reported.

Both the airline and aircraft have a solid safety record. The carrier's chairman said the plane, which had entered service in 2003, had undergone maintenance in 2015 and that the UAE pilot had over 7,000 hours of flying experience.

It is the first time an aircraft operated by Emirates appears to have been damaged beyond repair since it was founded in the 1980s and is only its third serious safety incident.

The crash is a blow to the Dubai carrier weeks after it was voted the world's top airline by Skytrax at the Farnborough Airshow, taking the crown from Gulf rival Qatar Airways.

Emirates carried 51.3 million passengers in 2015 and is the world's fourth largest carrier in terms of passenger numbers adjusted for the length of each trip.

Safety experts said it was too early to pinpoint any cause for the crash. Judging by footage of the aircraft's intact tail section, where the "black box" flight recorders are located, vital voice and data recordings should be available for investigators.

Online weather reports before the crash reported Dubai was relatively windy, with dust blowing and "wind shear" reported on all runways.

Wind shear is a potentially hazardous condition involving sudden and unpredictable changes in wind direction or speed.