9 Months Before 9/11, Online Discussion About Whether WTC Could Survive Plane Impact

I found the following on "Geekosystem" and thought it was interesting:

Reddit alerts us to the existence of an unsettling thread on aviation site airliners.net dated November 30, 2000, in which forumers debated whether or not the World Trade Center “could survive an 767-300 impact.”

Several commenters chastised the original poster for asking such a morbid question, but there are some eerily prescient responses in the thread: While the general (though not unanimous) consensus was that the WTC would stay standing, but with heavy damage, and most (though not all) repliers took the question as referring to an accidental crash rather than a terrorist attack, they predicted the danger to people on the ground as well as in the buildings and in the plane.

The question asked was this:

"When the two towers that make up the World Trade Center were built, they were designed to withstand the impact of the largest airliner of the day, the Boeing 707 Intercontinental. The Empire State Building survived a B-25 medium bomber crashing into it on very foggy day. It was during the weekend when most people weren't there, but still, 14 people died.

Anyone wanna bet that the World Trade Center could survive an 767-300 impact?"

Some of the replies are below:

"It might survive it with heavy damage as the building still was standing after terrorists blew up the car park and the foundations."

"The greatest danger any air crash over Manhattan would pose would be to people not in buildings but on the ground."

"I would think more people would die on the ground from the result of falling debris, rather than the jet actually slamming into the building. Sure people would be killed and injured in the building...."

"The structure itself would survive..."

Interesting indeed, but nothing to spend too much time on (I don't think).

19 replies to the question were filed and these were just a few covered here; not everyone agreed.