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.