alf5071h makes some interesting points. I don't know the full story and reasons behind the Smartwings flight but once in the SIM, I was PF when we had an engine failure in the cruise whilst somewhere over the Greek islands. I elected - and my Cap agreed - to fly to Athens rather than land on one of said islands.
My reasoning was that a) We were in an A330. b) We were losing altitude,(drift down), and had to make a decision since we did not have a lot of spare fuel. c) The weather was only good enough at Athens and at the runway on the island almost directly beneath us, I forget which one it was. d) We did not know anything about the airfield below us and we were in an A330, so e) I wanted a known long runway in case we found later that we had landing distance issues owing to reduced stopping ability. f) If we had had to go-around, we would have then been low on fuel, so would have had to commit to the single island runway. g) Athens was well within the descent profile, so we were not taking the aircraft beyond where it could safely go, it would have taken the same flying time to descend to the island runway as it did to descend to Athens, but Athens was not geographically the nearest airfield.
The TRE criticised my decision to go to Athens in the de-brief, and no doubt he was right, but I think my reasons were also valid, I thought that had I attempted to land an A330 on one of the shorter Greek island strips I might have embarrassed myself.