All 309 passengers and crew survived after an Air France Airbus burst into flames when it overshot the runway and crashed into a gully at Toronto's Pearson International Airport in a lightning storm on Tuesday.

Airport officials said there had been only minor injuries as passengers evacuated the jet, an Airbus A340 . The plane skidded 200 yards past the runway as it came in to land.

"As far as we know at this stage the passengers were able to flee the aircraft before the fire broke out," Steve Shaw of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority told a news conference.

"As far as we know there have been no fatalities and no serious injuries, although some 24 passengers have been taken to hospital with minor injuries."

Smoke and flames billowed from the plane, which landed in a gully where there was a fatal aviation accident 27 years ago. The smell of smoke drifted into terminal buildings.

All flights to or from the airport, Canada's largest and busiest, were canceled or diverted to other cities.

"The plane came to a rough stop, and that's putting it mildly," passenger Roel Bramar told Canada's CBC Television.

"I was in the very back of the plane and could see there was fire... People were just running like crazy, just in case there was an explosion, which I guess there wasn't. So I guess things ended up okay, but I can't tell for sure."

'RED ALERT'

Shaw said Toronto airport was under a "red alert" as the plane came into land -- which means there is a danger of lightning and thunder. Ground activity stops, and planes must not be marshaled or unloaded.

But he declined to speculate about whether the plane might have been struck by lighting. "The Transportation Safety Board will conduct a full investigation," he said.

Air France said the plane, AF358 from Paris to Toronto, had 297 passengers and 12 crew members aboard.

The A340-300 has a range of more than 7,000 miles, which makes it popular with more than two dozen carriers for long-haul flights. The ill-fated aircraft was at its seating capacity of 300 passengers.

Investigators will zero in on the flight data and cockpit voice recorders for information on crew and on the aircraft's performance.

Debbi Wilkes, who was driving on a highway alongside the airport, said it was "pouring rain" and "pelting with hail" as the plane came down. "We saw a bolt of lightning come down and hit something," she said.

The plane was lying off the end of a runway close to a main traffic artery. Some passengers ran to the highway and were taken to hospital from there.

Afternoon rush hour traffic quickly clogged up along the highway, Canada's busiest, as vehicles passed only a few yards from the crash site.

An Air Canada jet crashed into the same creek in 1978 in the last fatal accident at Toronto airport. That plane had 107 people aboard. Two died.

"It was about 4 o'clock. It was getting really dark. All of a sudden lightning was happening. A lot of rain was coming down," witness Corey Marx, who was standing by the highway watching planes land at the airport, told CNN.

"It came in on the runway, everything looked good. Sounded good. Hit the runway nice and all of a sudden we heard its engines backing up."

Marx said rescue workers got to the plane within about 40 or 50 seconds.

PHOTO CAPTION

Smoke billows from a passenger jetliner that caught fire Tuesday Aug. 2, 2005 after skidding off a runway in the rain at Pearson airport in Toronto in this image from television. (AP)