It makes perfect sense, the company has completely screwed up in a way that's totally unrelated to Coronavirus, and now they're trying to conflate the two issues.
I imagine this data could easily be used for a scam, considering the vast majority of these customers would have had flights cancelled and are probably pending refunds. A simple "Your refund is being processed, please enter the details of the card you paid with" would be very convincing for all those desperate for their money back.
This statement is too funny. For those looking for the quote in the article, you will find it in the duplicate HN post's [0] article [1], of which its comments were merged into this thread.