The one and only time I was in the lounge of a 747, I was asleep. It was February of 1971 and I was coming home to the US from Turkey with my infant daughter to visit my parents. It was the next-to-last leg of a 36-hour grueling trip which included a taxi ride, a ferry ride, another taxi ride, changing planes in Frankfurt, changing planes in London, changing planes in New York, and changing planes in Chicago. We got on the 747 in London and apparently I looked like an extra from The Living Dead.
As there were only seven passengers on the whole plane -- yep, seven (flights were frequently running almost empty back then but the government made the airlines keep up their schedules) -- we were all put in first class. As I remember, there were more flight crew members than passengers. After we took off, the flight crew took one look at me, removed my baby daughter from my care and took me upstairs. They made me a nice bed on one of the lounges and put me to bed. I had a three-hour nap and came downstairs to find out that everyone from the pilots to the passengers had been fighting over who got to care for and play with the baby (she WAS pretty cute). I was given an Polaroid photo of her sitting in the pilot's seat, wearing his hat (actually, it was a picture of a hat with two baby legs sticking out....she was only four months old). She, of course, had wings pinned on her onesie and had a toy airplane. When we left the plane and got into the customs and immigration area, I was met by two airline employees who took me through a side door to bypass it all (which was good because she was erupting from both ends and we weren't fit to be around....)
My one brush with being treated like a celebrity and all due to ten pounds of smiling baby and the kindness of strangers.
It's good that I didn't get used to it, because the trip back a month later was the customary Nine Circles of Hades.