Trying to book the wife and me a business class award, mostly on partner airlines, before the sky falls on 1 February.

Our travel will start from DEN on 24 September. Currently, SFO-ICN-BKK is part of our itinerary, with a stated 55 minute connection OZ to OZ at ICN, arriving at 1725 and departing for BKK at 1820. The OZ flight out of SFO only has a 78% on-time departure rate. Unfortunately, this is the only flight that will work to ICN, an airport I've never visited.

Other websites talk about possible long lines at transit security at ICN. Assume I must go through that even for an OZ to OZ connection in the same terminal? For those that may have flown SFO-ICN on OZ before, do they build in enough extra "flex" time on this route to accommodate a moderate departure delay at SFO, say up to an hour or so?

Thank you for any feedback.