Info Pres (Informational Presentations). The Area Rule. The area rule is a breakthrough discovery that advanced aircraft performance through advanced understandings in aircraft aerodynamics and design. With its roots in Germany in the 1940’s, it is said to have been rediscovered in the US in the 1950s. The Whitcomb area rule, named after NACA engineer Richard Whitcomb and also called the transonic area rule, is a design procedure used to reduce an aircraft's drag at transonic speeds which occur between about Mach 0.75 and 1.2. For supersonic speeds a different procedure called the supersonic area rule, developed by NACA aerodynamicist Robert Jones, is used. Transonic is one of the most important speed ranges for commercial and military fixed-wing aircraft today, with transonic acceleration an imp ...