My TB3 equipped Macbook Pro shows USB and Thunderbolt logos. Protip: When TDM is activated the screen of the Mac shows which protocols it supports by logo. So of course as I say you could go in the direction of the TB3 Mac to the MBA but not the other way unless you invest in a Thunderbolt 2 cable and adapter to go from Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3.
My retina MBP however cannot be a TDM host as it does not support USB TDM but my TB3 Mac does. I tried out USB-C to USB-A with a Thunderbolt 3 Mac as TDM host (MBP 15) to a retina Macbook Pro with USB-A (3.0) and it works fine! The receiving Mac needed me to put in my password of course since it's using Filevault. If you had two Thunderbolt 3 Macs then you could use a Thunderbolt 3 cable and connect the two as well with no adapter and run in both directions too. And remember, if you use Thunderbolt protocol correctly it actually can go in both directions so you could have either running as Target Disk Mode. Also it has to be a Thunderbolt cable, not miniDisplayport (there’s a difference, the Thunderbolt logo is on Thunderbolt cables, it’s a lightning bolt). You also cannot use a TB3 cable, the adapter only takes a TB2 cable on the female end and it’s a TB3/USB-C plug. So if you want to go from the 17 MBA to any other Mac, you have to use a TB2 to TB2 cable to either a TB2 Mac, or if it’s TB3 it needs the Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter. But, for Macs without Thunderbolt 3, as a host they need Thunderbolt on both sides and the right cables. So any Mac with a Thunderbolt 3 port supports both protocols, and the MacBook 12 inch supports USB only as its port is USB only and not Thunderbolt. This means you can use the USB-C to USB-A cable (if the cable has Superspeed USB 3.0 or 3.1, also the receiving Mac may need to support USB 3.0 or later too, which the 17 MBA of course supports 3.0 so it’s good there). From what I’ve read, Macs equipped with USB-C can use Thunderbolt protocol or USB protocol as the Target Disk Mode host.
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