Editing Operation Frequent Wind (section)

==Options 1 and 2: fixed-wing evacuation==
By late March, the embassy began to reduce the number of U.S. citizens in Vietnam by encouraging dependents and non-essential personnel to leave the country by commercial flights and on [[Military Airlift Command]] (MAC) [[C-141]] and [[C-5 Galaxy|C-5]] aircraft, which were still bringing in emergency military supplies.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|20–21}} In late March, two or three of these MAC aircraft were arriving each day and were used to evacuate civilians and [[Operation Babylift|Vietnamese orphans]].<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|24}} On 4 April, a C-5A aircraft carrying 250 Vietnamese orphans and their escorts suffered explosive decompression over the sea near Vũng Tàu and made a [[Tan Son Nhut C-5 accident|crash-landing while attempting to return to Tan Son Nhut]]; 153 people on board died in the crash.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|30–31}}

With the cause of the crash still unknown, the C-5 fleet was grounded and the MAC airlift was reduced to using C-141s and [[C-130]]s. Rather than loading as many evacuees as possible, each evacuee was required to have a seat and a seatbelt, reducing the number of passengers that could be carried on each flight to 94 in a C-141 and 75 in a C-130. But these restrictions were relaxed and eventually ignored altogether as the pace of the evacuation quickened.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|69}} Armed guards were also present on each flight to prevent hijacking.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|34}} American commercial and contract carriers continued to fly out of Tan Son Nhut, but with decreasing frequency. In addition, military aircraft from Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Poland, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries flew in to evacuate their embassy personnel.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|34}}

Throughout April, the "thinning out" proceeded slowly, largely because the South Vietnamese government was slow to issue papers allowing Americans to take Vietnamese dependents with them, with the result that MAC aircraft were often departing empty.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|44}} Finally, on 19 April, a simple procedure was implemented that cleared up the paperwork jam and the number of evacuees dramatically increased.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|46}} The fall of [[Battle of Xuân Lộc|Xuân Lộc]] on 21 April and the resignation of President [[Nguyễn Văn Thiệu]] on 21 April brought greater crowds seeking evacuation to the DAO Compound as it became apparent that South Vietnam's days were numbered. By 22 April, 20 C-141 and 20 C-130s flights a day were flying evacuees out of Tan Son Nhut to [[Clark Air Base]],<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|60}} some 1,000 miles away in the Philippines. On 23 April President [[Ferdinand Marcos]] of the [[Philippines]] announced that no more than 2,500 Vietnamese evacuees would be allowed in the Philippines at any one time, further increasing the strain on MAC which now had to move evacuees out of Saigon and move some 5,000 evacuees from Clark Air Base on to [[Guam]], [[Wake Island]] and [[Yokota Air Base]].<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|62}} President Thiệu and his family left Tan Son Nhut on 25 April on a USAF [[C-118]] to go into exile in [[Taiwan]].<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|67}} Also on 25 April the [[Federal Aviation Administration]] banned commercial flights into South Vietnam. This directive was subsequently reversed; some operators had ignored it anyway. In any case this effectively marked the end of the commercial airlift from Tan Son Nhut.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|66}}

On 27 April, PAVN rockets hit Saigon and [[Chợ Lớn, Ho Chi Minh City|Cholon]] for the first time since the 1973 ceasefire. U.S. officials decided to stop using the less maneuverable C-141s, which had been loaded with up to 316 evacuees, and use only C-130s, which had been taking off with more than 240.<ref name=Tobin/>{{rp|69}}