Reply #45: I doubt it

[Kevin Fenton]

The planes hit quite near the top:
The central impact floor in the North Tower was 95 (out of 110).
The central impact floor in the South Tower was 81 (again out of 110).
In any case, it makes no difference how far up they hit, because each building's 283 columns were tapered to take the weight of the floors above into account.

The planes took away about 14% (North Tower) and 15.5% (South Tower) of the buildings' gravity load-bearing capacity and the safety factor was at least three. What happened to the rest of the building's load carrying capacity? The planes' tanks were more than half empty when they hit and about a third of the jet fuel was used up in the initial fireballs, the rest burning up in about 10 minutes. Are you suggesting 2 buildings with safety factors of over 2.5 were destroyed by office fires lasting 56 and 102 minutes?