You mean the hundreds of eye witnesses, or the crowd on FR, or the engineers and mechanics at TWA, or the people who took video and had their entire CAMERA taken ?
Although it's rare for a meteor to hit a plane,
Actually, it's impossible. Now.. bolides and meteorites could strike a plane. Meteorites (albeit very small ones) strike planes all the time.
The belief this doesn't happen, that we don't have rocks falling from the sky, is still around in some quarters.
Had a 40 year old female 'friend'. She told me that meteorites (aka Shooting Stars) were STARS that fell from the sky, and that's why we can't see as many STARS in the SKY as we used to.
But I have a clue for those quarters, the Earth is round
It only look round from far away. An optical illusion. It isn't round, it's shape changes with the procession of the moon, and up close it's just undescribable, especially where it gets hit by rocks falling out of the sky.
NOW... back to your theory. The bolide would have to have a certain mass for it to work. Too small, it wouldn't have caused the plane to crash. Too big, it would have vaporized the plane. It would have to be like Goldilocks and the Three Bears "just the right size".
Next, there would have been multiple 'explosions' in the form of what sounded like semi-auto cannons going off. Do you remember the recent METEORITE coming down over RUSSIA? I listened to one of the best 'soundtracks' of the meteorite. The 'bangs' going off before the final BOOM were like the gunfire in a RAMBO movie. In the TWA800 case, I don't remember any reports of multiple shockwave type noises, or of large 'variations' in the brightness of the object(missile).
Recalling that there’s less air per cu cm the higher we go, the bolide would still be traveling very fast. Combine that with the forward momentum of the plane and you could get a pretty good smack out of a modest sized rock. Remember, the dental office down the street didn’t vaporize when hit ~ in fact, visitors were out in the parking lot looking for pieces. Still a hole in the roof. Now, put that hole in an airplane in an area with fuel you might have some exciting times ~ for a couple of seconds.
At the same time the plane was high enough that sound attenuation should have been sufficient to effectively muffle any collision ~ whether with a rock or a missile.