It is pretty much expected that a Mac will become unresponsive during a software update.
What's important is what happens afterward.
Typically the Mac will be unresponsive during the download and expansion of the compressed update file, and then when the update install begins the Mac may display a black or blank screen, a progress bar and or Apple logo. Eventually the Mac should return to your login screen. The update process may take as few as 10 minutes or as long as 30 or more depending on several factors.
Sometimes things happen and an update doesn't go smoothly. This may require the user to force shutdown the Mac and restart. Very often this results in a successful completion of the update, but sometimes not.
According to the Mactracker app, available in the App Store, the specs you provide indicate this is a MBA 13-inch 2017 model. It may have shipped with macOS 10.12 Sierra and can run up to macOS 12 Monterey.
• What version of macOS are you trying to upgrade to? And from?
• Exactly what happens when you try to apply the update?
Do you get any error message? If so what, exactly, is it?
• And what actions have you taken to solve the problem? Restart? What else?
• Have you checked to see how much free space your start up disk has?
To successfully apply an update you must have, at minimum, about ~40 GB of free space. You can launch Disk Utility to see where yours it at.
