Why would the F-16 pilots chasing Flight 93 on 9/11 have needed to ram the airliner?

Question

I realize that this is an old topic, and some elements seem to have been answered in the question below. However, one of the two F-16 pilots who scrambled to intercept United 93 just retired from the USAF, so it’s back in the news.
Both pilots said that they planned on a suicide mission that would have involved ramming the airliner. Some responses are here: < https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/80150/the-f-16s-that-were-scrambled-to-intercept-united-93-did-not-have-time-to-arm-th?newreg=c4c0dc4dad354f98938379776d829176>

My questions:

1. Couldn’t they have likely disrupted the plane enough to make it crash by using a sonic boom right over the cockpit? My colleague, who flew F-16s, aaid that the pressure wave from even a few feet was crazily intense — enough to flip cars over if it were a low pass over a street. If not over the cockpit, are the wings or rudder designed to withstand that level of pressure?
2. Couldn’t they have simply settled the two jets directly in front of the airliner or its engines, forcing the airliner to fly in their jet wash? I gather that the Top Gun jet wash phenomenon is real. Is the issue that commercial airliners are so stable that all the jet wash would have done is to produce turbulence? Seems like they could have gotten close enough that there wasn’t even enough oxygen entering the engines to keep them firing.

Answer 1

A small GA plane? Yes, a pair of 20-ton jets can damage a <1 ton GA plane without contact, guns, or missiles.

Sonic boom over the cockpit will do little to disrupt the flight of a 100-ton part 121 airliner, except startling the pilots for a second. Pretty much everything about an airliner is built to survive wind gusts, turbulence, wind shear, and other aerodynamic phenomena.

Nor will the jet wash shut down commercial engines running normally in level flight - they are notoriously difficult to shut down even with water. Jet engines only deplete the air from 21% oxygen to about 18%-20%, depending on their bypass ratio, which is well enough to sustain combustion.

The passengers would feel some turbulence, and an engine might choke momentarily, all of which would be bad PR for Al Qaeda Air, but it doesn't appear to have had any plans for a frequent flyer program in the first place.