To me it seems to be more so that Apple designs for Intels listed TDP and that’s it. The CPUs in the MBA are 9/10w and that is what it can handle sustained and staying slightly above base clock so not technically thermal throttling. Most of the time iirc Intel doesn’t list per core boost only the highest possible boost.

So for example the CPU is rated at 1.1ghz base and up to 3.5ghz boost. In the thermal throttling video we see it hold steady at ~10w and ~1.5ghz sustained. As far as Intel/Apple is concerned this isn’t thermal throttling because it is still higher than the base clock. Previously they would list all core boost clock and I think if it fell below that it would technically be thermal throttling