Smoke in the cabin/cockpit is one of those insidious events. 99.99% of the time it is harmless and will probably result in a "checked, found ok" by maintenance. Unfortunately, however, that other .01% of the time it can be absolutely deadly and can mushroom very quickly. After the ValueJet and SwissAir crashes most operators changed their procedures to "get the airplane on the ground immediately". I actually had something similar a few months after the SwissAir crash. I decided against the emergency evacuation as the smoke cleared by the time we landed, but we diverted to the nearest airport and did an emergency descent. The only thing management said about it was "Here is your hotel room. Don't worry about your trip tomorrow. You will be pay protected." This was a regional BTW.
Get it down then figure it out.
The only thing I could possibly fault the pilot for is the emergency evacuation, but that is more of an "AAR", arm chair quarterback thing and hardly something that warrants termination. It was a judgement call and I nor management were there.
