african drunk, i stand corrected on aeros only charging airborne plus 10 mins (i am not working on commission - honest
)
the point i was trying to make was the decision which i arrived at was a compromise between cost, location, attention to each individual student, type of training (SEP,MEP,sim etc), opinion of previous students and "feel" of the FTO .... some of these you can only get after having visited the school, its probably going to be the most expensive purchase one makes for quite some time so its important to do your research as thoroughly as one can.
i actually found the flight down to bristol from gloucester (15mins) really useful at settling my nerves and provided me with a final opportunity to practice an ILS before the test, and get a feel for the real wind on the day .... not the forecast.
schools are as different as we all are, i know friends who had to change schools to get a better service and training
thankfully i wasnt in that situation.