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Mishna: If the schach is 3 or more tefachim away from the sukkah walls, it is possul. If part of a house’s roof caved in and schach was placed there: if it is 4 amos away from the walls, it is possul.

Summary

Rabbah: I encountered the Rabbanan of the Beis Medrash and heard them saying: Empty space disqualifies a sukkah with 3 tefachim. Possul schach disqualifies a sukkah with 4 tefachim.

Rabbah: I said to them: How do you know this law about empty space? Isn’t it from our mishna? But from our mishna it seems that possul schach disqualifies a sukkah only with 4 amos!

Rabbah: They said to me: Forget about that case. Rav and Shmuel both explained our mishna as being based on the principle of dofen akumah.

Rabbah: I said to them: If so, what if there were a strip just a bit less than 4 tefachim of schach possul running down the middle of the sukkah and adjacent to it there was an empty space of just under 3 tefachim, it would be kosher. But if that empty space were now filled with iron rods, it would become possul. But airspace is worse than schach possul (since it disqualifies a sukkah with only 3 tefachim). So how can it be that in this case airspace would be more lenient than schach possul ?