This is an excerpt from an old article-unfortunately I can't cite the source and even if I could the link is probably dead.

"It is well
known by pilots that certain types of smoke are
distinguishable. Air conditioner smoke is not necessarily
indicative of a catastrophic fire or failure, and is readily
identifiable by its "oily" smell. In contrast, smoke from an
electrical fire, indicating a possibly serious or
catastrophic failure, is acrid, heavy, extremely pungent, and
easily recognized. While it seems unlikely that an alert
crew would mistake one for the other, any type of
smoke in the cockpit should cause a crew to take action
to position the aircraft for an immediate landing."

Barbara... Interesting reading, but I do not think that I would let my nose be the fire marshal.

Again, I say, go after lessons learned. Land.

"Again, I say, go after lessons learned. Land."

I totally agree with you Cecil! Just wanted to add, and never reset circuit breakers-solve the problem on the ground. Surprisingly, I still run across a few accident reports where the pilots do hestitate and try to continue flying despite an odor of smoke, or worse.

And yet following the sr111 tragedy there were still many people that defended the strict following of checklists. Here is an article that appeared on aviationnewsweb.com:

The Wall Street Journal reported on 9/18/98, page
B6, that Delta and FedEx reemphasized the emergency
procedures for fire or smoke on the MD11 to their pilots. In
summary, the safety update tells pilots to land the MD11
immediately and ask questions later. According to the WSJ,
the safety updates from Delta and FedEx were issued
in light of discovery that the pilots of Swiss Air
111 smelled a burning smell approximately three
minutes before their initial call to air traffic control.
The pilots followed standard operating procedures and
started troubleshooting the problem via use of a
checklist. The debate centers on whether they should have
forgot the checklist and immediately started an
emergency decent and landing.

Proponents of
checklists suggest that often the burning smell is a minor
problem such as a galley oven or alike, and can be easily
corrected. Opponents suggest that checklists waste valuable
time when dealing with smoke and fire, and the only
answer is to land the plane.

As I mentioned in
the newsletter, short of major structural damage,
smoke and / or fire is probably the worst in-flight
emergency. There are no easy answers and the debate will
continue.

http://www.aviationnewsweb.com/~aviation1/safetyup.htm

(link no longer works)

The easy answer in my opinion is to treat the odor of smoke very seriously on any aircraft, not just the MD-11. I hope that the TSB will emphasize this in the final report. I suspect they will.