A Goodbye to Frankie & Benny's, Glasgow Airport’s Jewel

It can be hard to say goodbye to something that has meant a great deal to you across your life. It is often people or pets that shape you in some intangible way, guide you in a moral or literal way to be the person you are today. That loss can be hard to reckon with, leaving something missing in your soul. For me, this was the closing of Frankie and Benny’s in Glasgow Airport, or as the Greenock Telegraph put it; Beloved restaurant chain closing down in Glasgow Airport. Remember when headlines used to give you details of what the story involved? I looked back into the archives of the Green-Graph, and to be fair, they have been historically consistent in their headline-writing. For the sinking of the Titanic, their banner read ‘Adored Ship declares emergency off Greenock coast’.

I’ve gone off-topic, forgive me; it’s the emotion of it all. 

This airside establishment closing takes away a holiday routine for me, having frequented the joint at some ungodly hour many times. You have to hand it to restaurants like this - do you want eggs benedict at 4 am? You got it! A burger before your flight to Malaga at 5? Yes, sir. A 6am coffee so strong it’s a surprise it got past security? Of course. This array of choice is part of the charm and the bewilderment. F&B’s would open for the first flight of the day and close after the last flight had gone wheels up, and with waves of flights, it generally always stays busy. 

If I may adjust my sarcasm into the upright position for a moment, it was genuinely a small tradition of mine to stop off in one of their booths before heading for a flight. Aside from corny music, carbon copy pictures on the wall and red leather seats, the service from those that worked there was never anything less than fantastic, friendly and welcoming, no matter the time of day. My lasting memory will be waxing lyrical to a wonderful server about my upcoming holiday, in between her dealing with a stag do of 70 guys wanting to sink their first pint. Professional and fabulous. 

Despite this closure, Glasgow Airport still has an array of places to choose from for food and retail - the Caledonia Bar, a Boots, WHSmith, WHSmith Bookshop, WHSmith Paperback, WHSmith Hardback, WHSmith Just Bottled Water, WHSmith Only Chargers That Cost £17.99. And let’s not forget there is both a Celtic FC shop and a Rangers FC shop. And if you don't fancy either of them, there’s a Partick Thistle stand by gate 33.

Glasgow Airport has always suffered from a slight inferiority complex, specifically that it’s inferior to its bigger, busier sister, Edinburgh Airport. A view I personally don’t subscribe to. Yes, Edinburgh is bigger, better laid out and more modern in style, but at least Glasgow never had a Harry Potter shop called “The Enchanted Galaxy” where Americans *cough* sorry, customers could purchase a Nimbus 2000 if their flight was cancelled. Edinburgh also has a direct tram link to the city centre, a boon, no doubt. And while it’s been long-lamented that you can’t get any kind of rail link to Glasgow airport, it could be argued that no train to Glasgow is better than a working tram to Leith, am A right? Is this thing on? 

However, this imagined inferiority will not last much longer as Glasgow Airport is “poised for its most significant transformation in over a decade as part of a £350 million investment by new owner AviAlliance.” That’s great - they want to upgrade infrastructure, turn around planes faster and bring back destinations like Milan and New York. They say it will drastically improve the passenger experience, but I read that they’re still going to have Ryanair fly from the airport, so that goal remains to be seen.

If a march towards the future of Glasgow Airport means saying goodbye to Frankie and to  Benny, then I guess that’s just the way it has to be. You can’t stop the march of progress and must say goodbye to things when tastes change. As the airport said on social media announcing the closure, “It’s time to shake things up”. That’s why I'm looking forward to the restaurant that will be replacing F&B’s, Sanfords. This bright new light will, according to the Glasgow Times, “serve up 'unreal' milkshakes, delicious burgers, and 'plenty more' American diner classics” Well, that's progress, I guess.