After Effects vs. Flash Scripting.

Hi. I would like to create a video sequence that shows several hundred of animated words. Each word would be “built” out of single animated letters.

Example: We want to show how the word “Adobe” is spelled. So, the letter “A” parachutes from the sky. The letter “d” jumps out of a lake and attaches to the letter “A”. The rest of the word (“obe”) materializes from the air with some particle effect.

I'm new to After Effects, but I know that a single animation should not be too difficult to create manually. However, with hundreds of words it should be smarter to use some scripting.

I have a lot of experience with Flash and ActionScript but not with After Effects.

Questions:

1) Which tool would you recommend for my project?  After Effects or Flash?

2) How difficult would it be to write this in AE script?

Thanks!