another nasa project the engineers were interested in was the supercritical airfoil, designed by richard whitcomb. the supercritical design promised to greatly lower transonic drag, as much as a swept wing in some situations. this allowed an aircraft with such a wing to have low drag in cruise while also having a wing planform more suitable to lower-speed flight—swept wings have several undesirable characteristics at low speed. additionally, the design has a larger leading edge radius that makes it particularly suitable for low-speed high-lift applications like a transport. boeing incorporated the concept into their design, the first non-experimental aircraft to do so.