There was a a similiar incident in India towards the end of 2003 , soon after Air Deccan started operations. One of their inaugral flights from Hyderabad with an ATR full of passengers had a venting incident on start up. Unfortunately the then Minister of Civil Aviation was sight seeing out of the window and promptly came to the "heroic rescue" of his fellow passengers (most of who were fellow politicians - such an invaluable national asset) by screaming FIRE and exiting the aircraft post haste! The minister then went on to enjoy his ten minutes of glory by speaking to every media channel within reach about his heroic act, much to the glee of the full service competitors of Air Deccan like Jet and Sahara whose officials for months afterwards never forgot to whisper to willing and unwilling ears about the risks of flying a low cost airline pointing to the above "accident". All the time, the Air Deccan guys had to grin their teeth and bear it !!
Fortunately the bureaucrats under the honourable minister had enough sense to keep quiet and not encourage the minister to do anything drastic (unlike a previous bloke who prompty grounded the Indian Airlines A320s without any sort of investigation after the tragic accident at Bangalore). As I understand in the case of Air Deccan , the same aircraft flew the next day (not sure whether the VIPs were on board!).