What is "soft landing"

A soft landing in the business cycle is the process of an economy shifting from growth to slow-growth to potentially flat, as it approaches but avoids a recession. It is usually caused by government attempts to slow down inflation. The criteria for distinguishing between a hard and soft landing are numerous and subjective.

The term was adapted to economics from its origins in the early days of flight, when it historically was the method of the landing of hot air balloons, by gradually reducing their buoyancy. It later also applied to aviation, gliders and spacecraft, as in the Lunar lander.

In the United States, modern recessions and hard and soft landings follow from Federal Reserve tightening cycles, in which the Federal funds rate is increased over several consecutive moves. In modern times, the most notable, and possibly the only true soft landing in the most recent 16 business cycles occurred in the soft landing of 1994, engineered by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan through fine tuning of interest rates and the money supply.

In addition to being a certain type of business cycle, a soft landing may also refer to a market segment or industry sector that is expected to slow down, but to not crash, while the wider economy may not experience such a slow down at that time. For example, a contemporary newspaper headline read: "Soft landing forecast for house prices as rate hikes stem growth".

As it stands, these forecasts have very little scientific value and there is not one single verifiable instance of a soft landing following an economic bubble. This is enforced by definition, as any potential bubble followed by a soft landing would, in retrospect, not be deemed a bubble.

Soft landing may refer to:

• Soft landing (flight), a type of landing, usually of a hot air balloon in descent by gradually reducing its buoyancy
• Soft landing (rocketry), any landing which does not result in the destruction of the payload vehicle
• Soft landing (economics), a business cycle downturn which avoids recession
• Soft landing (chemistry), a process in chemical instrumentation

A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft- lander landing that does not result in damage to/the destruction of the vehicle or anything on board. (Contradictory to Hard landing.)

This can be achieved by

• parachute —often this is into water.
• vertical rocket powered landing, often referred to as VTVL (vertical landing referred to as VTOL, is usually for aircraft landing in a "level" attitude, rather than rockets — first achieved with an orbital rocket vehicle stage on December 22, 2015).
• horizontal landing such as with the Space Shuttle also known as VTHL.
• being caught as attempted with Genesis (spacecraft) and followed by some other form of landing.

Soft landing can be contrasted with the term hard landing.