WI: Bigger 9/11

Yeah, I know, another one of those 9/11 threads, but anyway:

WI, instead of merely hitting the buildings, Al-Qaeda followed up by shooting down airliners with MANPADS near major airports (JFK, O'Hare, LAX, DIA, Atlanta, Newark etc.)? The logic is that after the Twin Towers and Pentagon are hit FAA would ground all flights ASAP, and then the terrorists can maximize damage.

Is it possible? And what would the reaction be?

Marc A

P.S. For the purpose of this discussion let's say a bunch of Stingers dated back to the 1980s found their way into AQ hands.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Yeah, I know, another one of those 9/11 threads

Glad you knew it was coming, anyway.


P.S. For the purpose of this discussion let's say a bunch of Stingers dated back to the 1980s found their way into AQ hands.

Their batteries would be dead. Those things don't have a long shelf life. The British got Stingers during the Falklands (they were the first to use them) and none of the ones they got during 1982 were in the inventory past 1990, apparently.
 
If you want to make an ATL to maximize 9/11 casualties and damage, there are other ways to do this:

1. Get 2 more aircraft hijacked and have them flown into the Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center.

2. Eliminate the delay on flight 93. With flight 93 airborne on time, the passengers would likely not know what's going on and te terrorists may manage to fly the plane into the Capitol building or White house
Does anyone know, if an on-time flight 93 would hit its target before the towers & the Pentagon got hit, thus limiting time for an evacuation?

3. Have flight 11 hit the North WTC tower at a lower level, in OTL it hit quite high. More people would get trapped above.


Quite terrifying and possibly leading to more than 7000 dead people if it's all combined.
 
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