Originally Posted by randomman
I heard from a pilot a while ago that the reason for keeping the door is that it is worth over a hundred thousand dollars. Throwing it out would seriously damage it. If the aircraft survived the emergency landing reasonably well (most emergency landings do not result in the loss of the plane), the loss of the door would hurt the airline.
Randomman
Could be part of it...I doubt they're that valuable though - it costs less than that to replace a slide.