A Macbook air 7.2 is a 2017, right? (in America, we generally use the year of manufacture, not "the number").
1. Boot to INTERNET recovery (NOT to the "recovery partition")
Command-OPTION-R
at boot.
KEEP HOLDING THOSE KEYS DOWN until it asks for wifi password, then enter it.
2. Once the internet utilities are loaded, open disk utility.
VERY IMPORTANT -- go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".
3. Look at the list on the left. The "topmost" item should be the internal drive.
ERASE IT to APFS, GUID partition format.
4. When the erase is done, quit disk utility and open the OS installer.
It should offer you "Monterey".
Start clicking through. The Mac will reboot one or more times, and the screen will go dark for a minute or more without any other activity, just be patient.
5. When the install is done, you should see the initial setup screen (choose your language).
Start clicking through. If you have a backup, connect it now.
6. If you are going to migrate from a backup (sounds like you're not), setup assistant will ask you to "point the way" to the external drive. Give SA time to digest things, then it will present you with a list of stuff to migrate. I would "migrate it all" and let SA do its thing.
7. If you ARE NOT migrating, just set up a new account. You can skip email, etc. for now if you wish. You really just need a user name and password to "get to the finder", and then go on from there.