Just think what the discussion would be if they had waited until they saw or smelled smoke, disregarding the ecam, crashed and killed everybody.
If the Swissair at Halifax had successfully overweight landed for sure someone would show up and criticize them for not dumping fuel.
They decided to dump fuel , and were criticezed for not having oveweight landed.
The same in this case.
People already started criticizing the crew because they declared an emergency without smelling smoke.
Nobody seems to know that statistics prove that in case of fire inside the airplane , we have a life time of 17 min average.
So , I will not let the system burn and reach a critical situation only because I don`t feel the smell.Come on !!!!
I once had an electrical failure and lost a lot of systems. And surprisingly , I didn`t have any ECAM message.Went to the bus equipment list to try to understand a relation amongst the systems lost.As without following any ECAM I turned the APU on , I recovered part of it.And decided to return.
So , since I didn`t have an ECAM message , does it mean that I should have continued the flight?
In another situation , I had a HI OIL TEMP while starting a NPA. The procedure says to reduce THR lever and shut the engine down.
But as I reduced the trhust lever , the temp imediately came from 180º to 70º , making me believe it was just a sensor`s failure. I decided clear the ECAM and land with the engine in idle. It was later discovered an EIU sensor faulty.Should I have shut the engine down anyway?
All this said to say that we have to stop looking for manuals and checklists with lawyer`s eyes because we are not lawyers. From us adherence to the procedures is required, for sure, but above all good sense.Or the industry can start changing pilots for monkeys which will save them a lot of money and headache.
Concerning this incident I fully share and reinforce Ditchdigger`s question and wait those who criticized crew`s decision to return, to answer , which they didn`t do yet:
I hope this isn't a stupid question, and I realize that it may be unaswerable in any specific sense--how long might one expect between the initial smoke message, and the point at which shutting off the electrical supply wouldn't help? In other words, how much time does a crew have to consider the possibilities and react before a fire would become self sustaining?