That, what the Jpost described, does not only happen with Award Tickets.

I once booked a FRA-DXB-FRA on the LH website, roughly 4 hours prior to departure.

Like usual, I went to the whole online process, entering my CC# and my FF#, address details and so on. The process was running normally, no interruptions and ended with "Booking completed".

When I arrived at the airport, I had exact the same situation like in the article, there was a reservation but no tix issued.

LH staff managed to issue the tix manually, but in the very very last minute.

By the way: OS (Austrian) is bit more accurate in those things.
They send you a first confirmation mail after the reservation has been completed and then another confirmation mail, after payment has been made and the tix has been issued.