SR71:
Which is more unsafe:
1) 500RA at Vref+20 (i.e., unstable) but lands at Vref, or
2) 500RA at Vref+15 (i.e., stable) but lands at Vref+15?
Thing is, you never know whether today is going to be the day that your brakes/reversers/runway drainage/brain fails...so whilst one may be able to lose 20kts in the last 500' (N1 might be a little low for 'safety' though), how far will you push it to see? You have to put a 'gate' in somewhere.
The fact that the 'gates' we use are usually manufacturer-derived from decades of accident statistics aside, as a Captain you'll appreciate how nice it can be sometimes for someone else to have made the decision for you, from the peace and quiet of an office; so you don't have to do so at 500'.
However, I assume you're not arguing against the stabilised approach concept itself but rather the draconian application thereof. Consider, though, if you were a Chief Pilot, what would you do? Think back to some of the Captains you might have flown with earlier in your career(!) and whether you could sleep easy at your desk in the knowledge that their discretion to apply safe judgement was
all that was preventing the next runway excursion.
And was that last sentence a statement or a question? Maybe you've been getting a few too many management e-mails recently..
Frontlefthamster - Perhaps the 'mistake' was to fail to pay sufficient attention in the debrief the last time...