Its not surprising at all that the jet makes a huge hole in the ground. Jet fuel is more energetic than RDX, while converting that energy slower. So both the chemical and kinetic energy is much higher with the jet then with a russian cruise missile. If anything the crater is surprisingly small.
The fact that there was a fire long after the impact shows the fuel was not burnt in the crash. Fuel hung around long enough to still be burning at least several seconds afterwards, long after the crater was formed. That is why it wasn't a missile. Missiles use high explosives (propellants and warheads) which burn up all at once to generally leave a non-burning crater.
Some back-of-napkin math yields a crater depth of a little under a meter ... which is in the ballpark of images.
aircraft (1.5m radius cylinder x 18m long) at 6700kg = 51.54 kg/m3 aircraft density... over ~1,500kg/m3 average soil density x aircraft 18m length = 0.63m
=.63m / 2-foot penetration below ground level... which is what the pictures show.
Soil is dense. Aircraft are marshmallows compared to soil.
In the explosive sense, I agree. Depending on how much fuel they had, it could’ve been a decent percentage of the aircraft’s weight, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth
When the object is near supersonic spèeds (throught the various materials) even the strenght of the materials becomes very secondary. A meteor made of sand makes the same crater as one made of stone.
IIRC some the guys who hijacked the planes took flying lessons and were notoriously uninterested in takeoff and landing compared to steering, according to their instructors. They weren't very sophisticate.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, though. In a conspirational mindset, if it was a false flag operation (and it did help USA find support to rearrange the Middle East oil control, get rid of their old bomb stock, and a few other perks), a State certainly has the proper people to plan such scheme, and the actual hijackers would only need to know which face and height of the towers to hit, and at what angle and speed.
I get that my comment probably didn't reach the "insightfulness" threshold for HN, but geez, go easy on me.
I'd guess that wasn't deliberate also, since logistically, it was better to hijack the plane while it was in range of their target, and it had enough fuel to make it look like kidnapping instead of terrorism to delay the response. One can't ignore that a refueled plane weighs about 20-25% more, though.