SEATTLE • A man dying of throat cancer was on a bucket list vacation with his family when they were removed from a flight after his young son had a dog allergy attack, while the other passengers applauded.

Mr George Alvarado, his wife Christina and son Giovanni were at the tail end of their bucket list vacation to the north-west of the United States so Mr Alvarado could visit members of his family.

His seven-year-old son then suffered a severe allergy attack from being near a dog that was on the plane, Reuters reported.

Mrs Alvarado told broadcaster KING5 that her son broke out in hives and began scratching himself soon after the family boarded a flight from Bellingham, Washington, to the Phoenix area on Monday.

The family alerted a flight attendant, who "smirked" and said there are dogs on every flight, Mrs Alvarado wrote in a Facebook post.

As the family from Arizona left, a number of the 151 passengers on board the Airbus 319 applauded, she said. "What crushed us was that our seven-year-old boy looked at us with tear-filled eyes and said 'I'm sorry that I put you through this. This is all my fault,'" Mrs Alvarado said in her post.

Allegiant Air, a subsidiary of Las Vegas-based Allegiant Travel Company that operated the flight the family was on, said in a statement that the family was told to leave the plane, and rescheduled to take another flight over safety concerns for the boy.

The company said it apologised to the family for the inconvenience and booked them a new flight that landed at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport late on Wednesday.

The family is not seeking compensation from the airline, Phoenix broadcaster ABC15 reported.

But Mr Alvarado said the incident forced them to reschedule his cancer treatments and ruined what could be one of their last family trips. "I am sad this has to be a memory with my dad," Giovanni told KING5.