A Florida family’s vacation unraveled at the very end, when they were removed from their Allegiant flight home because of their service dog. The maddening part is that the dog was doing exactly what she was there to do, and the trouble came down to a single detail in how she’d been booked.
Sherry and Jerry Cordero, of Bradenton, had flown to Colorado together with their daughter Gianna and Gianna’s service dog, Brigette. Gianna lives with cerebral palsy, and Brigette both soothes her and gives the family a heads-up before a seizure hits, so they can get her somewhere safe before she falls. On the way out, the family told Tampa Bay 28, everything went smoothly.
What went wrong on the way home
The return leg, on September 26, 2025, was a different story. According to the Corderos, Brigette had been registered on the reservation as an ordinary pet rather than a service animal. Following the pet rules, they’d brought a carrier. As they were getting settled and easing Gianna into her seat so she wouldn’t fall, Brigette was briefly up on Gianna’s lap, and that’s when a flight attendant confronted them, telling them the dog needed to be stowed underneath the seat. The family said they understood that and were simply in the middle of getting situated.
An Allegiant spokesperson, Stephanie Garibay, told the station that the Corderos were removed for not complying with the airline’s pet-in-cabin instructions, which require a pet to stay entirely inside its carrier and be handled only by the traveler, and warn that non-compliance can mean being denied boarding on future flights. The Corderos maintain Brigette was in her carrier, and that they were given almost no time to reposition her before being told to leave the plane.
The fallout was steep. The Corderos were stuck in Colorado for three additional nights, scrambling to find a hotel and restock basic necessities, including medical supplies and pet-care items. They filed a complaint, and Allegiant rebooked them for September 29. That flight went fine, with one difference: this time they listed Brigette as a service animal rather than a pet-in-cabin, which is precisely the box they say they got wrong the first time.
The detail that could have prevented it
Here’s the rule worth burning into memory before your next trip. Notifying an airline about a service animal, and providing the required documentation, isn’t just airline preference, it’s federal regulation under the Air Carrier Access Act. A service dog booked as a service dog travels in the cabin with the handler and does not have to be crated under the seat. A dog booked as a pet does, and it’s held to the pet policy, carrier and all.
That’s the crux of what happened to the Corderos. Had Brigette been entered as the service animal she is, with the Department of Transportation’s service-animal form submitted ahead of time, the crating rules that tripped them up wouldn’t have applied to her in the first place.
Worth noting on the other side: nothing in Allegiant’s policy or in federal law actually says a carrier can’t briefly sit on a passenger’s lap while people are still boarding and stowing the rest of their bags. On that point, the family’s account and the airline’s account of what “compliance” required simply don’t line up.
The Corderos don’t get to travel often, and this trip to see elderly relatives was meant to be special. Instead it left them shaken, and determined to warn other families to double-check exactly how their service animal is booked before they ever reach the gate.
