If you ve had fire, smoke, or a burning odor, the risk of reinitiating the problem may be too great. It s one thing if the problem happened over mountains or on an overwater leg. It s quite another if you re over friendlier terrain where airports are more numerous. By the way, don t forget to vent the cabin with fresh air after using a fire extinguisher. This should help eliminate any remaining toxic fumes from the extinguishing agents.
Most manuals say to close any air vents after purging fumes to prevent reigniting any fire.
A complete electrical failure in VFR weather conditions isn t nearly as problematic as one that happens in instrument meteorological conditions. In good day-VFR conditions, you shouldn t need any navaids or communications radios to fly to and land at a nearby uncontrolled airport. Night VFR is a little bit worse. With a complete electrical failure there ll be no way to turn on the runway lights at uncontrolled fields, no landing lights, no position lights to help other airplanes see you and, of course, no way to communicate your position to other airplanes unless you ve been smart enough to pack a handheld transceiver in your flight bag. On IFR flights, pilots experiencing an alternator-out situation should consider making one final broadcast to ATC before powering down.