Originally Posted by
DirtyDavey
I was on this mornings flight arrival into LHR from IAD when on taxiing to the stand the pilot had to make an emergency stop which threw everyone forward in their seats.
Had the situation you described been happening without any doubt anyone standing would have been thrown off their feet, and had they been pulling luggage down at the time that would have landed on someones head.
Sounds like CC made a judgement call, but with possibly serious consequences had they made same call on my flight this morning...
Depending on the circumstances (e.g. blowing a guaranteed once-a-day connection), this feels like it might be "rational illegality": The chances of that happening are remote enough (particularly if the pax are swift about getting their bags out) that it's actually financially worth it to the airline to look the other way. If the cost to the airline of dealing with the blown connection would be £300 and there's a 1-in-1,000 chance of something going sufficiently wrong to trigger a lawsuit costing £25,000 there's a chance the airline will go ahead and take the chance (and bank on some customer goodwill coming out of the 999 times it doesn't go wrong to boot).