Well, to put my two cents in. I have a John Deere coolant eye on heater hose outlet. This is a thick walled clear hard plastic tube with a clear plastic dip leg with a valve on the end. Small particles settle out in the dip tube and you can drain them.
Since it is clear, I can readily detect if there is air in the system. When I change the entire cooling system it takes me a LONG time to finally get all the air out and finally get flow through the heater hoses. Up until flow starts through heater hoses I can see the air pocket in the horizontal section of plastic tubing and no flow.
When I had he problem I kept telling myself it wasn't air, but it was! It just took a long time to get it all purged.
Note that I've only seen this when I do a complete coolant change or have lost a significant amount of coolant from a broken hose or something else.
I've used several suggestions by people on this forum to get the air out and eventually they all helped - Jacking up the passenger side to make the radiator cap the highest point in the system.
While filling the system and continuing to fill it after I start the car and before installing the radiator cap, I squeeze the upper radiator hose to burp air out of he system. When you do this when air is in the system, you will see the level in the radiator go down, and then you can add more coolant, keep sqeezing and adding coolant every time the level drops until squeezing doesn't seem to help anymore. This will minimize the amount of trapped air in the system.
Good luck.