"Surprise", NOT!
Of course you meant this sarcastically, but I don't. I don't because it isn't funny, sarcastically or otherwise. I don't because it isn't solely a testament to the predictability of canniving calculation and therefore it isn't, for a reason to be plainly set forth below, good fodder for a joke.
The suit is the function of american submission and cowardice. The flying Imams know the airline won't hit back.
The Airline has a counterclaim for delay of travel, lost revenue, conspiracy to tortuously interefere with contactual relations, etc... but they will never and would never dare to bring it. So, goes the thinking, "why not sue the Airline"? After all, they don't hit back.
If you don't beleive the airline has a counteclaim, you are wrong. And it is not just them. Anyone on that flight has a counterclaim or direct claim for any number of things. Here are but a few of the causes of action: intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, assault, breach of mutual reciprocal covenants, .. and I could name many more. The burden of proof is a mere preponderance(more likely than not) for most of these. And the idea that one can't make the case, per a perponderance of the evidence, that the imams were engaged in a conspiracy or conduct to test the limits of impermissible or suspicious permissible conduct on an airplane is ludicrous.
All you have to show is that they knew, or should have known, that their conduct, individually, or in concert, might delay the flight or might cause anxiety among the passengers. That is it.
If you allow people to hit at you, to strike at you, without fear of reprisal, then you deserve to get hit and get struck.
A couple of thoughts. First in a few weeks this will be a subject for a "Law and Order "show, where we will see how badly these poor misunderstood Imams were treated and how those awful airlines profiled them and of course they will win the suit on TV for Millions.
My next thought is that any decent court would see this case for what it is, and refuse to even hear it.