Orange tie from Essex : :-)
maybe the reason you didn't make it was the orange tie ! :-)
the way I see it is that they won't give us any feedback at all.
I guess we paid our fees, done our bit and there's no interest in giving feedback.
The invite not to reapply was the icing on the cake, and it really goes against the principle of learning, preparation and training. Learn from mistakes to improve your skills.
Perhaps they are looking for natural "talents" and they don't want your performance to be altered by learned behaviours.
Arguably, I could have been able to fly blindfolded an F-16 inverted and still fail the group exercise ! LOL
Anyway it's always hard to tell, there's lots of demand and very little supply and that will always generate unhappy applicants !
I am gonna look elsewhere but this time I make sure I speak to as many people in the business as I can. When I applied with CTC I knew little about the scheme and I did it partially as a game. To my surprise I made it to stage 3 but as usual as you get a taste for it you want more, so I'll try other ways. Might cost a bit but nothing comes for free after all !
Good luck
Will (the Italian one !)