[@Leah] Gao has been travelling since he was a young teenage at the very least he could've been around the ages that team avatar started out at. At the most roughly around 15/16. That gives him roughly around 10 years of experience in the least. If he was unable to figure out airbending in ten years while intensely studying, and learning by trial, and error than Gao would be a pretty piss excuse for a fodder bender. His whole background revolves around his travels, and hardships learning from various places he's been, and adapting as he's come along. Likewise Aang was a young boy at the time of his studying of water bending, and with a master it took him less than a year to at least achieve competence with the bending arts. Once again that comes back to Gao having his life so far learning one single element. 

Also I never said anything about advanced bending. He can't form wind balls, and he learned to use the glider through practice, and observing air nationals while travelling. He can't fly either. What I did say was that he was powerful he's innately a capable bender. But due to his chosen life style hasn't been able to capitalize on this. He's capable of strong bursts of wind, and controlling it deftly but he doesn't know how to mold it to his style most of his techniques are simple, and blunt he is a hammer, not a sword. He creates gusts, and gales not tornado. He's more about brutally knocking his opponents down, and hitting them with strong blasts of wind than he is dancing around, and letting them tire themselves out. Any close range combat skills he has would be limited to what hand to hand fighting he picked up when he couldn't use his bending to get out of his way, and is likely just slightly above street brawler level.

The whole jest of his character is to foil the normal air nomads/nationals who dodge gracefully, and subvert their enemies. They seek inner peace while Gao would be one just to dodge when he feels its needed smack them in the face with some high pressured wind, and then if that failed then start to try to get crafty. He's quite weaker in that sense than a normal air bender trained by the descendants of Aang. They would be able to get out of the way, and probably find some way of outmaneuvering him but in other circumstances Gao's brutal approach would overwhelm some other benders.