What I do for the time being I just scroll on the map and then save the towns as I go,and then I can find them in recent waypoints section.
Not handy at all when flying as hands are shaky
Other then that I love it, works great, it brought me places too.
I used my friends bendix king AV08R for a while,I didnt like it. I found aera much easier to use, with more features apart the annoying town search.
I will write another email to Garmin and hopefully they can sort this out.
I'm sure if automotive Garmin has the town input function on the go without the need of an address, I cant see the reason Aera cant have the same feature.