surely the staff should know what the max limits are and should not accept anything heavier.
Sometimes, if no one's watching, we do bend the rules a bit!
My pet hate is heavy cabin baggage because of the safety aspects (which I won't bore you with, as the subject has been laboured here many times). If I enforce the rules and make someone check in their trolley bag, I seldom charge any excess (unless the passenger has seriously overweight baggage problems!)
However, pax must be aware that baggage weights are limited to each individual ticket - so, strictly speaking Lan Din Gere, your trouble and strife could have copped for 10 kgs excess charges on the LCY-FRA sector.
Example:
EI ORK-LHR is normally 20kg in Y.
However, BA LHR-YYZ is "2PC" (2 x 32kg)
A through ORK-LHR-YYZ ticket will therefore have 64kg total (max 32 per piece). This seems to apply to transatlantic due to IATA rules.
Under the IATA agreement, the 2 piece Transatlantic allowance only applies if connecting flights are within 24 hours. A businessman travelling New York - London, stopping in London for three days, and then carrying on his journey within Europe would only be allowed 20 or 23kgs allowance on the European sectors.
However, as mentioned previously, the "ticket" is the contract and if "2-PC" is shown on the ticket, then that is what we accept!
Electronic Tickets are a whole different ball-game!!!