Sunday 18 February 2018

Keisei Skyliner AE Series: 25 Million Passengers

EMU Keisei AE series, Skyliner, displays a gold-colored commemoration sticker

Keisei Skyliner is hunky-dory. On November 1st, 2017, Keisei Electric Railway made a press release announcing that the passengers of the third generation Skyliner exceeded 25 million on that day. At the same time, Keisei held a commemoration ceremony at Narita Airport Terminal 1 Station. The 25 millionth passenger was a Swiss gentleman. The president of Keisei Electric Railway Company, the deputy mayor of Narita City and the Muto sisters of the idol group AKB48 attended the ceremony.

The third generation Skyliner, namely the EMU AE series, was launched in 2010 to replace the old model, the AE100 series. The AE series reached 10 million passengers on December 19th, 2013. It then achieved 20 million passengers on September 13th, 2016. The period between the 20 millionth and the 25 millionth passengers was only one year and two months. It was the fastest pace so far. In contrast to the Keisei Skyliner, JR East's Narita Express (NEX) has made poor showing recently. I think that the major reason for these contrasting performances was their speed. The AE series connects Nippori in downtown Tokyo and Narita Airport Terminal 2 in only 36 minutes, which is much faster than that of the NEX. Furthermore, Keisei is a big competitor for JR East because the fare of the Skyliner is much less than that of the NEX.

Currently, one set of the AE series, namely set AE5, displays a gold-colored commemoration sticker on the front of the train. It proudly says "thanks, 25 million passengers".

EMU Keisei AE series passes through Higashi-Matsudo Station on the Hokuso Line

Official information about Keisei Skyliner:
Official information about the EMU Keisei AE series (in Japanese):