Instant cut involving air service following illegal trading (7)
I believe the answer is:
traffic
'illegal trading' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'instant cut involving air service following' is the wordplay.
'instant' becomes 'tick' (I've seen this before).
'cut' means to remove the last letter.
'involving' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'air service' becomes 'raf' (I am not sure about the 'air' bit.**).
'following' becomes 'f' (used when citing page numbers etc).
'tick' with its last letter taken away is 'tic'.
'raf'+'f'='raff'
'tic' placed around 'raff' is 'TRAFFIC'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for traffic that I've seen before include "Illegal trading" , "Movement along a route" , "Deal illegally , in drugs say" , "Smuggle" , "Commerce; transport" .)