Twenty-two students in Middlebury College's School Abroad in Alexandria, Egypt, program boarded a flight to Prague at about 4:45 p.m. Vermont time Monday, the college said on its website.
Also on board were two Middlebury staff members and a dozen students from other American universities, who like the Vermont students were looking to escape the tumult in Egypt and found extra space on the Middlebury charter.
The college said the students would spend at least one night in Prague, and then school staff hoped to arrange flights back to the United States as soon as possible.
The flight left Borg El Arab airport at 11:45 p.m. Monday, Egypt time.
Andrea Lloyd, stepmother of one of the Middlebury students, Tik Root, said he had planned to spend the full academic year studying in Alexandria. She said Root, 21, is a junior majoring in international relations who is studying Arabic and had spent July in Yemen before beginning his studies in Alexandria in the fall.
Root was one of five Middlebury students in the program, based at Alexandria University. Seventeen students from other American colleges were enrolled there. They had been at the Alexandria airport for two days awaiting evacuation, Lloyd said Monday afternoon.
She said Root reported that the demonstrations of the first two days, which the students watched from afar, were "very exciting," but that then the tenor became scarier with the onset of looting. She said students in the Middlebury program were safe the whole time, and that their bags had been loaded on the flight to Prague when she last spoke to her stepson at the airport.
Updates posted on Middlebury's website late last week and over the weekend initially said the students were told to stay in their apartments or dorm rooms, and then were evacuated to the airport, "which is secure and guarded by the army."
Michael Geisler, vice president for Language Schools, Schools Abroad and Graduate Programs, said in a statement Saturday that the 22 students were "not in any immediate danger," and school staff had contacted all of them by landline phones, as cell-phone and Internet communications were unreliable or down.
Geisler also said the school had contacted parents of all the students.