the.com/glide path

means The gradual, controlled approach to a final position — originally the descent angle a plane follows to land smoothly, now used for any slow managed transition toward an endpoint.

from Straight out of aviation: the 'glide path' (or glideslope) is the precise descending line a landing aircraft is guided along, especially via instrument landing systems, so the plane settles onto the runway rather than dropping onto it. The phrase drifted into economics, politics, and office life in the 20th century as a metaphor for any gentle, engineered decline — interest rates, retirements, expectations — easing down without the bump of a hard landing.