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I don't know what model of plane this is, but I was watching a Real Engineering video on the Boeing 787. He said that some planes have a third engine for generating electricity (the APU) and the exhaust for that is at the tip of the tail.

Maybe there are concerns about potentially damaging the APU?

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Most commercial planes have APUs (That's the loud sound you hear/exhaust you smell from the jet bridge) but a tail strike would hit closer to underneath the back seats of the plane than the middle of the tail like that. The only concern in emergency situations like this is getting every passenger safely on land. Not their bags, not every component of the airplane. Both of those are more easily resolvable via insurance than lost passenger lives.

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