Question: If you're a passenger in a commercial plane, the windows do not allow you to see straight ahead, only to the sides. How would the passengers know they were about to crash into the Twin Towers before they actually crashed into the Twin Towers?
If this was the plane crashing into the Pentagon, which made a rapid descent without slowing down or lowering its landing gear, this reaction would be much more believable. The passengers would feel the descent and know that they were about to crash, even if they didn't know exactly where they were going to crash or what they were going to crash into.