Also, you might be interested in knowing that this same word is used in Acts 20:30 –
“from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (RSV-CE)
“from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them” (NAB)
The point here is that people were becoming afraid – they thought that, when the second coming of Jesus happened, only those who were alive to see it would be able to join him. That is, the societal view of the day (that when you were dead, you were gone – period!) was causing them some anxiety. They worried that – for their deceased loved ones and for themselves, possibly, in the future – dying would mean that they would lose out on heaven. Paul is simply reassuring them that even the dead would share in the resurrection. Since the paradigm of the day was that heaven was ‘up’, then naturally, the place that live people would go, at the parousia, was ‘up’ in the air and into the clouds! So, Paul is using that characterization, not only for the living, but for the dead.
The important thing to take away from this passage isn’t direction, per se, but the fact that all – living and dead – will come into new life, in glorified bodies, in eternity (which is initiated at the second coming of Christ).