It's interesting how a normal situation can rapidly degenerate into chaos through mistaken perceptions and confusion.
The fact it was a charter is signficant to me. I think it's fair to say that the passengers on a charter flight are likely to have a much lower level of flying experience than those on a scheduled flight. The scheduled flight will have a mix of newbies and very experienced passengers. In such a situation, a word from another passenger to say "it's condensation, happens all the time" would probably have resolved the situation before it started.
Perhaps charter operators need to take this into account and have crew explain the obvious a bit more often.