Because of availability of frequent flyer seats, I've been routed for a connection at Qingdao which arrives at 9:45 p.m., and leaves the next afternoon at 1:40 p.m. For this trip, China is simply a connection point between other destinations - I am not staying in China otherwise. I would rather see something of the city, but do I need a Chinese visa to leave the airport? Or can I stay in the airport in Qingdao? Or is this a mess that I should try to get out of by watching out for other options to change my itinerary? The trip isn't until next year, so there's time to work on it.

You should be able to leave the airport.

I'm curious--what are the international connections you are using Qingdao as your connection for? Korea/Japan? Korea/Taiwan? Officially, you should be able to leave the airport, but not sure how many Transits Without Visa this airport sees!

Ulan Bator, Mongolia, to Tokyo via China Airlines.

I'm assuming you mean "Air China" because "China Airlines" doesn't serve ULN in any capacity. But, more importantly, no airline plies ULN-TAO on a nonstop basis; PEK and ICN are the two most logical options, and both of these have lots of flights to NRT.

Few airlines fly to UB so it's got to be Air China you are talking about. And their flight goes ULN-PEK. Why you would not be routed on immediately to Tokyo but via TAO first can only be explained by the likelihood of no available award seats on a nonstop PEK-TYO for your travel date.

The connection is potentially troublesome from a visa standpoint. Your total time in China on Transit Without Visa is 24 hours, determined from the time you're scheduled to arrive in PEK to the time you are scheduled to depart from TAO. So if you are arriving on the ULN-PEK flight currently scheduled for 14:00 arrival, you barely qualify but should be OK. But if that ULN-PEK flight for the date you are traveling is scheduled to arrive earlier than 13:40 that day, you have a lack-of-visa issue since your 13:40 departure the following day would put you over 24 hours. Real-time changes in schedule would not be a problem.

You might want to keep checking and see if any award seats open up on a direct PEK-NRT/HND flight, even if for the next morning which would overnight you in Beijing instead of Qingdao.

If you end up staying with your current routing, please report back on this thread after the trip, and let us know how Transit Without Visa in Qingdao went. We have no data points on TWOV for this airport, so your input from firsthand experience would be valuable.

Thanks for your comments. I would definitely want to know for sure I am OK before following through with this itinerary without a visa. On this itinerary I do arrive at PEK at 2:00 p.m., and fly out of TAO at 1:40 p.m. the next day, so actually I'm booked for fewer than 24 hours in China. Yes it is Air China, my mistake on the name of the carrier. My flight is with UA miles, and after this discussion I've gone back to the United website, and a number of options have opened up on other connections that don't involve TAO - enough on my date that I don't feel I need to decide right away, but I think the prudent thing will be to give United a call and see about getting the itinerary changed. I assume that since there would no effect on my origination and destination points, this can be done OK.