rjbrown99

One small note that may help others - after reading up a bit on the wifi chip in the NanoPi Neo Air, it is the same Ampak AP6212 that is present in the Raspberry Pi 3. This was helpful as it answered a lot of questions on capabilities, such as an ability to support simultaneous wireless client and AP functionality.
 
Assuming the following can be ported, it would also likely support monitor mode with frame injection. 
https://github.com/seemoo-lab/bcm-rpi3
 
Another post worth reviewing related to AP-mode operation:
http://tech.scargill.net/size-matters-neo-air/#comment-27039

Answering my own question...
git clone https://github.com/zador-blood-stained/fel-mass-storage Write fel-sdboot.img to an sdcard Power on the NanoPi Neo, boom FEL mode is back. Run 'start.sh' from that repo to enable the ability to see the emmc partition on the Mac. sudo dd bs=1M if=Armbian_5.24.161101_Nanopiair_Ubuntu_xenial_3.4.113.img of=/dev/disk2 unmount/reboot Reverting back to the 3.x kernel worked. After reboot it was just a matter of using screen to connect to the device. Nice!