This attack is very simple and basically a few button clicks these days.

Script kiddy at best.

Agreed, and it seems to lack the hacker spirit I'd expect out of someone attending DEFCON. The only intentions I can figure out would be...

1. Just to screw with fellow passengers - dick move, how do you know someone wasn't working on something critically important on that wi-fi?

2. 'Robin Hood'?? If they had a paid wi-fi session and were gonna bridge all the passengers who connected to their rogue AP onto it for free. Extremely farfetched theory though since they could have easily still done this without deauthing the people, who'd already paid anyway.

3. Actual black-hat hacking, hoping to snoop on people's connections for cybercrime reasons.

Can't say I'm bothered at all that these guys had the cops called on them.

You would be surprised by the number of professionals who would be at peak tech performance if they could pull it off

IT security is a lot more about the processes, risk, and data management that technical performance these days.

The book to study for CISSP CBK is hardly any technical (The Code Book is more technical than that)

The ISO 27000 series defines an Information security management system that doesn't even need to involve "computer", as it discusses more about data in the organization.

Research these days is also based a lot on how to address security risks on top of safety risks, not just how to hack any system (and I do believe that the obsession of the aviation industry about these studies is why everything was ready so that suspects were met with police)

Sure, but you probably shouldn't mess with planes, even is mundane or trivial.

For some reason, we treat planes super differently than every other public space or transport.

The actual hacker creds is earned by not getting caught by a federal investigation.

Although, with Kash Patel's FSB cosplayers, maybe that's playing in easy mode.

And remember, you can't brag about it either, that's how most get caught.