Jesus said there are two ways, two highways, two pathways. One is wide and bright and crooked and it leads to destruction. The other is straight and narrow, but it leads to life. Without Christ, we're on the wrong road. We're dead people traveling down a dead-end street.
Commentators are divided.
Even the great commentator R. C. Lenski confesses that he just doesn't know what to do with this term. Most interpret this in one of two ways. Some take it literally, that Satan's demonic hosts fill the air and pollute the atmosphere. They are everywhere if only we had eyes to see them. Others take this phrase figuratively, that Satan is the prince of the moral atmosphere of earth.