MacOS install USB not listed in boot manager on startup

Question

I have a 2011 Macbook Air (a1370) that was stuck on the boot screen with the spinning wheel.

I booted into internet recovery and from Disk Utility wiped the SSD clean. When I then tried to reinstall Lion through recovery, I kept getting the error "Can't download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X." Avoiding this error, I made an install USB with TransMac and attempted to boot from that, but there are no drives listed, including the internal SSD.

I have tried to reset NVRAM but that did not work. My USB drive is converted to GPT and I have tried different OSX versions. I'm not really sure what to do from here.

Weird time estimate

Initial error

Install USB partition

No bootable partitions

Answer 1

I finally was able to borrow a friends Macbook and created the installation drive there. It turns out that was the issue, and it booted fine my next attempt. I suppose the error in recovery was independent to my Macbook Air and just needed a reinstall. Because TransMac did not work on different computers, MacOS's, and TransMac versions, I can conclude that creating MacOS installation media via this method does not work.]

Update: I received a second Macbook Air and got the same error in the OSX Lion recovery. This might be an internet problem and it wouldn't due harm to check try a different connection.