MacBook – Will this MagSafe power adapter work on the MacBook Air

Much like the commercial versions you mentioned, what you want to do is possible (that there are commercial versions essentially proved this).

You'll need to chop apart a MagSafe cable or figure out how to interact with Apple's airplane adapter. You'll also need to figure out how to interact with the batteries to get the correct voltage (and maybe do cell wear levelling).

Also, I doubt the MacBook Pro batteries will last anywhere near as long or be as reliable as the commercial versions.

(There was an original answer, but it made incorrect assumptions that were addressed in the comments. See the edit stack for the originals.)

According to Apple knowledge base entry HT2346 the 85W power adapter is the right one. However, there seem to be issue with "T" style (the old) vs. "L" style (the new): see this thread. It seems that for some people, a workaround does the trick:

Turn off your computer, flip over the laptop and remove the battery, hold down the circlular button on the battery for 10 seconds, the green light should go out. Re-install the battery and turn your computer on. Your new charger should work fine.

If that doesn't work, you need to call Apple support to arrange for your power adapter to be replaced with a "T" style adapter:

Apple is aware of the issue with the pins being at a different depth in the new chargers with the "L" shaped connection. After having two new ones not work, I contacted tech support. They sent a new version of the old charger with the square mag safe connector. It works fine.

Edit: Apparently the MacBook SMC Firmware Update 1.4 should fix the "L" style power adapter issue on older MacBooks.