Why would you use a mac for kernel dev? That's a horrible choice. Stick with bare metal linux.
I think a Mac with virtual machines works just fine. I use such an environment for kernel development, and don't have any problems. Certainly don't try to build directly on the Mac, particularly on a filesystem without case sensitivity. I have used Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora successfully to build kernels for the native CPU architecture. These can be tested in another VM quite easily. I have not tried to cross-compile a kernel however (so I haven't tried to build an x86_64 kernel on an m4 mac, nor an aarch64 kernel on an x86_64 mac), but if it works on bare metal, I would expect it to work the same on the VM. You just have to get all your prerequisites installed first. I don't know the specifications for your Macbook air, or whether it is an M series machine or an older x86 machine. The M series are much faster than the older X86 macs. The number of cores, amount of memory, and amount of storage will all play into how well this environment works for you. I'm using an M4 Max with 128GB memory and 8TB SSD. I have my Fedora VM setup with 16GB memory and 4 processor cores and 1TB (sparse) disk. The ubuntu VM is setup the same, although I don't usually keep them both running. I usually work in the Fedora VM.