Why the **** would the pilot do that? Remember, suicidal attacks using a jet liner was only something out of a Clancy novel until 9/11, so there would have been no reason to endanger the passengers from the pilots pov.
Not entirely. On Christmas 1994 the algerian terrorist group GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé) hijacked
Air France Flight 8969, an
Airbus A300 with 220 passengers on board, with the intention to crash it into the
Eiffel tower in
Paris. Their scheme was thwarted when they had to refuel in
Marseille and demanded the aircraft to be refueled with the multifold amount of fuel necessary to reach their destination. The french authorities began to suspect some sort of suicide attack in which the aircraft might be used as a bomb and ordered the
GIGN, an intervention group of the
French Gendarmerie to storm the plane and liberate the passengers. The operation turned out to be a complete success with all of the terrorists and none of the passengers killed. When I was watching the 9/11 events on TV and the reporters kept on babbling that something like that had never been attempted before over and over again I called the responsible news desk and recommended them to check their own archives. It still took more than half a day before they finally mentioned Air France Flight 8969 at least once.
The decision to repair the towers might not be a matter of pure economics though; I could easily see there being a lot of public pressure to keep the towers standing just to deny the terrorists any credit for destroying them.
Even if the Twin Towers had not collapsed on their own, the sustained damage would have been so severe that the structural integrity would have been compromised beyond repair. The responsable construction supervisory board would have above any reasonable doubt had no option but to order the demolition of both the towers. When I was watching the events unfold, I was wondering how the hell they are going to tear those structures down without damaging a good portion of lower Manhatten, at least until WTC 1 and 2 came down on their own.