sure! No problem.
There is a distinct lack of connectivity between the iPad and displays. Whether they are projectors, HDTVs, etc. The iPad is limited in what it can connect to compared to the MBA. This may not be a concern if one is presenting in a standard known environment...simply establish the adapters needed and it is done. But for flexibility of the unknown or unpredictable, I feel more comfortable in knowing that it can handle a wider variety of situations.
As I mentioned previously, support for presentation remote controls is limited with the iPad. The "official" Apple solution is to use your iPhone or iPod Touch (or iWatch) as a presentation remote. That is not practical and isn't something that Apple themselves practices... watch any Apple presentation (like yesterday's WWDC) and you'll see they were using a presentation remote... not an iPhone.
If one is stationed in front of their tablet/notebook while presenting, then a presentation remote control isn't particularly necessary. But if one is the type to wander on stage while presenting, a remote control is a necessity.
When presenting, dual display support is important. I have found iOS support for dual display to be lacking. It works in a very rudimentary sense, and for most instances it is fine, but there's just some things that are "off" about it when compared to macOS support for dual displays.
On occasion, I will have the need to add or modify a graphic included on a slide. On the MBA, attach a thumbdrive, copy the file (or drag n drop it) into the keynote presentation. This is not possible in the iPad. Some will say to use the "Camera connection kit" adapter to pull the image from the thumbdrive, but that is extremely limited... it only accesses files from predefined folders and predefined filename conventions... because it assumes that a digital camera is being connected.
After a presentation, it is common for people to come up and ask for a digital copy of something that I presented (audio/video/pdf). Now I COULD take down their email address and email them, set up a shared folder on dropbox, but it is nice to have the option of simply attaching a thumbdrive and copying the files right then and there.
Hopefully this gives some things to consider when deciding between the MBA and iPad for presentation. If your presentation workflow is different, then not much is applicable.
Yes, MS Office for iPad is extremely limited. It does a TERRIFIC job of DISPLAYING Office documents accurately. I was impressed that it accurately displayed my teaching notes created in Word that has a bit of moderate to advanced formatting and even correctly rendered the custom font of my handwriting.
MODIFYING Office docs is a bit hit or miss. Depending upon what you are doing, you may find that the function you need is not available in Office for iPad.
CREATING Office docs from scratch on the iPad is greatly limited to capabilities that are on par with Google Docs or Pages for iOS. Simple docs can be created easily. Anything beyond that becomes practically impossible.
One thing that I do with my 12.9 iPad Pro is do what I can with the iOS versions of iWork and MS Office and when I reach a limitation of their functionality, I'll use Jump Desktop to remote into my iMac in my home office and continue editing the file with the macOS version of the app. (I keep my working set of files in the cloud for access) Since Jump Desktop supports a physical mouse on the iPad, it's just like sitting in front of my iMac.
