Originally Posted by
xray1978
I have been flying for a long time, but this was the first time I’d encountered such a situation. Given the medical circumstances at the time, submitting a medical certificate and requesting a rebooking seemed like the most straightforward and reasonable path. In hindsight, it turned out to be a nightmare, not because of my choice, but because of OS's inability to correctly process a rebooking they themselves approved. Based on this experience, it was certainly my last voluntary rebooking with Austrian Airlines.
As a passenger, it is not my job to audit the airline's internal ticketing rules or validity periods. If a carrier's official system allows a rebooking, confirms the new dates, and displays the status as 'Confirmed' for 11 months, any reasonable passenger would assume the transaction was valid.
Here you have some debate:
As you "been flying for a long time" as an experienced flyer, you should know that 'Confirmed' does not equal to 'ticket issued'. When checking your reservation you should have seen that there is no associated etix number. This should have rang the alarm bells. And you eventually should know about the ticket validity of one year. So as an experienced flyer it would have been easy for you to detect the issue much earlier.
Of course the fault is still with OS.