17 April 2025
If you follow soccer then you’ll know there’s controversy over a proposed new site for Manchester United Football Club.
Fans of Old Trafford are up in arms at the idea of moving out of the iconic stadium – but so are members of Lancashire Aero Club over the possible loss of Kenyon Hall Airfield, their current home.
Why? How are the two connected?
The proposed new site for MUFC is currently a huge rail freight yard close to Trafford Park. To make way for the Red Devils (MUFC’s nickname), the freight yard will move to a planned, even huger, ‘Intermodal Logistics Park’ in the countryside and swallow up Kenyon Hall Airfield in the process.
If you wonder what an Intermodal Logistics Park looks like… it’s this. Image: Tritax
Lancs Aero Club pilot Steve Grimshaw told the BMAA’s magazine, Microlight Flying, “The so-called ILP is basically relocating the huge rail freight interchange from Trafford Park to the countryside at Kenyon to create space for Manchester United to build its new stadium, so after 14 years of hard work developing the strip into what it is today, our days at Kenyon now look numbered.”
There’s worse for Steve.
“Being a Liverpool fan, I can’t stand Man United at the best of times, so this really is rubbing salt in the wounds,” he said.
Kenyon Hall Farm Airstrip as it is currently, amid idyllic Green Belt countryside
The logistics park is being developed by a company called Tritax Big Box which says it delivers critical supply chain infrastructure.
“As owners of the UK’s largest logistics investment and land development portfolio, we can provide established and emerging businesses with the space they need to succeed,” said the company.
Birchwood Town Council held a consultation on the logistics park plan which ended on 21 March 2025.
