Diversion "ONLY" option ?
I wasn't there and so like most have only read what is reported so far but I would be very interested to know if the crew descended as well as diverted towards an airport or at least gave serious consideration to that as an option.
There are too many unknowns for this incident but there appears to be plenty of evidence that if smoke is caused by a genuine fire and that source is not found and rectified then any crew has between 11 and 15 minutes to get the plane on a surface any surface.
Clearly this type of scenario is not related to Etops per se as normal rules require only 60 minutes from an airfield for a twin anyway, so if you have only 15 minutes avaiable there may be only one option and if you do not start an immediate descent then even that option may be denied to you (at least the cntrolled version).
Juts to stress again these comments are primarily directed at fire/smoke inflight and not this incident initself.