Sounds more like a glitch, if true.
The article itself is very poorly written
+1 more like a blog post, not worthy of being called an article
I do remember when Dr. Dau happened some airline pledged to offer voluntary bumps “up to $10k”, but I don’t recall it being Delta and I don’t think this is that. Lucky passengers, I’d likely take the $10k in a heartbeat (obviously depending on the circumstances).