Here is something that happened on one of my flights which shows that pax do NOT listen to the crew when you give them an instruction on the PA in what they perceive to be an emergency.
I am the SCCM on the flight and we are on final approach into MAD. The Landing gear was down and had been down for around about 1 minute, you could see through the window that we were very low. A pax presses a call bell at around about row 7, I picked up the PA and said "For the passenger who has just pressed the call bell, the cabin crew are not able to come to you at this time as they must be seated for the landing - once we have touched down on the runway a member of crew will come to you". Another call bell goes off a few seconds later and we are now no more than 30 seconds to touch down, I again repeated my PA saying we can not come but will do in less than 1 minute after the aircraft has landed.
Next thing I know there were several passengers standing up, looking fearful and shouting at myself and my crewmate working at the front of the aircraft to come over, I snatched up the PA again and said "Sit down immediately, the cabin crew CAN NOT attend you at this time, we are about to touch down on the runway YOU MUST SIT DOWN NOW or you risk being injured on the landing - Crew will immediately attend to you AS SOON as we have touched down", the standing pax still kept shouting at us to come over and more and more stood up, I am now screaming down the PA "SIT DOWN IMMEDIATELY, YOU RISK BEING SEVERELY INJURED IF YOU DO NOT", some other pax in the cabin assisted me by also shouting at them to sit down, the last pax sat down literally 2 seconds before touch down. The landing was rather bumpy and any pax standing would have been thrown off of their feet and more than likely would have been hurt.
What was the cause of the excitement in the cabin? Well it was a young woman who had feinted in her seat. It as a warm day and she was wearing around about 20 layers of clothing and due to the heat of her clothing she had feinted.
For those of you wondering why I did not contact the flight deck, well the aircraft was below 800feet and the A319 interphone does not allow communication with flight deck once you go below that level.
Once we were on stand I went over to the passengers and said to them "Do you realise the danger you put yourselves in by standing up?" they said that we should have attended the woman, I replied saying "I have to stay in my seat for landing for the same reasons that you do, if I am out of my seat and the landing is heavy I could get a nasty injury, possibly even killed" I went on to say that "If the pilots had heard my screaming at you to sit down they could have taken the aircraft back into the sky performing what is called a 'missed approach', if that happened and your friend needed urgent medical attention she would have had to wait possibly as long as 10-15 minutes before the aircraft could get back on the ground, and that could have had potentially fatal consequences however, as we were less than 1 minute to landing if she had been seriously ill we could easily get paramedic assistance within just a couple of minutes". I pointed out to them that we the crew are trained to look after the passengers and have the necessary experience to decide when it is best to wait or to do something and this was one of the occasions when you have to wait a few moments before taking any action. I said all of this in the nicest way that I could so that they wouldn't walk off of the aircraft feeling really stupid, angry or upset and they did apologise in the end for not having done what I had instructed, but they said that at the time they were too busy thinking of their friend and didn't even recall hearing what I had said to them over the PA and it was only when the people sat near them were shouting at them to sit down that they actually heard!
Now, this goes to show that even when the cabin crew do try to explain, some people just will not hear what has been said. It's like putting a pair of blinkers on someones head, things are happening around you but you can only see what is directly infront of you. Perhaps on this flight in question that the thread is originally about the cabin crew did give a decent explanation over the PA, but the pax were too involved in their perceived fear to actually HEAR what was being said and therefore their primal survival instincts took over and they felt that they had to take action themselves.