All firing into the airliner would have done was alter the impact point.You could easily have it strike several buildings instead,and create even greater loss.I'm not going to detail any of several rather obvious ways to have increased the body count(please,no one else give the murderers any ideas).ONLY if you could be sure of near total destruction by massive explosion AND over water or Central Park could you mitigate the damage.30,000 gallons of burning kerosene isn't instantly gone.Some people watch too much TV and believe special effects are real.
Back in the pre-Clinton era, those fighter jets launched from the now nearly abandoned alert sites would not have been relying on bullets for anything more than an attention-getter. Had the fighter gotten the aircraft in the clear, much of the passenger craft would have been destroyed right away. Remember the Iranian jetliner we accidentally hit?
This reminds me of an excercise we’ve all seen variations on. You’re in a nuclear bomb shelter. We’ve just been hit. You have enough supplies for six people. You have seven people in the shelter. (They go on to describe each of the seven people.) Who do you kick out?
The remainder of the class time is spent debating who should be kicked out. Nobody takes into consideration that you can’t kick anyone out, without opening the door, and killing everyone.