how soon after the first crash did the second plane hit

The second plane hit 17 minutes after the first crash.

What happened, in simple terms

• The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. (Eastern Time).

• The second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.

• That makes the gap between the first and second impact approximately 17 minutes.

Many timelines and news retrospectives still highlight that short 17‑minute window as the moment when it became unmistakably clear that this was not an accident but a coordinated terrorist attack.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.