Everyone wants to sit next to this very fancy dog

A dog likes to fly in style. Brush his hair, hold his head high, sit in first class, wear a bowtie. A nod to the days when air travel felt like a luxury, and not an uncomfortable, unpredictable inconvenience. What could possibly be wrong with that?

NBC Analyst Mark Halperin boarded a Delta flight on Friday night, and seeing this fancy dog sitting regally in first class, thought something was wrong with the picture.

He tweeted his dismay, though his vague wording left his particular dissatisfaction unclear.

The photo, captioned “Seriously, @delta??!?,” evoked a lot of reactions.

Most people couldn’t understand why Halperin would be complaining about basically the dapperist dog in the skies.

https://twitter.com/udfredirect/status/855813238294024193

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After the myriad reactions – some that merely pointed at the intrinsic humor in the situation, some conveying dismay at Halperin’s dismay – Halperin tweeted a series of explanations.

Sounds like one big mix-up.

Stating that he’d been merely miffed that the dog had been reassigned away from its owner to an empty aisle, Halperin had offered to switch seats so that the pup could have a traveling companion. (The photos above were taken pre-reassignment.) But by that point, the plane was already taxiing, and it was too late.

Just a series of confounding actions, from the moment of boarding all the way to the Twitter discussion. But we can all rest assured that doggie got to his destination, and with more class in his little paw than most of us have in our whole lives.

And as one of Halperin’s initial detractors tweeted when the mix-up cleared:

We all can be a little vehement on social media, but then again, if it’s in defense of dogs with bow-ties who can’t wait to be your seat buddy, who can blame us?