well well, should be interesting to follow this one up, in the couple of months since you posted the original thread there's been a few changes around the business ...
The great bombshell has fallen, student loans are no more, so I guess that rules option 1 out.
It also means that option 2 is going to become a right b!tch, since it seems likely that the big sausage factory schools are going to cut adrift a LOT of their instructors at the end of the year, people who are no longer needed in the wake of the demise of the student-loan gravy train they've been riding for the last few years, and the likely 80% reduction in CPL student numbers now that people have to go back to paying for it themselves again. There are dozens and dozens of people in this category sitting about in polytechnics up and down the country right now, fresh and high time C's and probably low hour B's as well, who have got halfway to the airlines, got 5 or 6 or 800 hours, no multi, no guaranteed fresh pack of student-loan suckers to come through the door next year and all of a sudden wondering where their next C152 / tomahawk hour will come from? The smart ones are putting out the feelers to the non-student-loan-approved aero clubs now, because it's a fair bet that they are the only ones that won't be absolutely snowed under with redundant staff in 6 months time.
Regional hiring has also slowed right down, I guess because Cathay put everything on hold after SARS, Eagle etc didn't have to take on the numbers of newbies they were forecasting 6 months ago.
Did you find a good school xelophab and are they gonna stick by their promises, given the new-look flight training industry landscape?