Originally Posted by GrayAnderson

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).