As such I'm considering anything. HGV training is an option,
Yea Electrician is on my list of possible choices.
What??? No offence, but these and suggestions of IT support (presumably via some vendor certs), H&S etc.. are "good" jobs from the perspective of someone with no other valuable skills, no degree etc..etc.. Not knocking someone who say decides to pursue any of those careers, they're good solid jobs etc.. pay is reasonable etc.. but.. you do have other potential options here.
I mean if you want to take your past experience as just being the equivalent of a glorified bus driver, train driver etc.. then sure.
But I'd disagree with this:
The biggest hurdle is that with zero experience it will be an up hill struggle to even get a job at all. I have a degree in Computer Science and Management, however that was 20 years ago and I honestly can't remember anything. As I said as well I've never worked in IT so have no experience to fall back on.
You don't have zero experience for a start - you have 15 years experience, as a manager in charge of equipment worth millions, hundreds of lives and a team of co-pilot + stewards/stewardesses.
You don't have zero IT experience, your aircraft is absolutely full of IT equipment, some of which you needed to know inside and out in order to be qualified to fly it.
Presumably some of it comes via boeing/airbus, some of it is from 3rd party manufacturers?
At the moment (if you don't trash your CV by going off and doing something like training as a HGV driver or becoming an entry level IT support bod) you're an experienced professional with management skills etc..
A pilot is still an impressive job to people, generally seen as a "professional", if you were in the armed forces (save for a few helicopter pilots in the Army) you'd be commissioned and would have a career track to take you to senior management roles.
With that in mind I'd suggest there are other options if you were to aim higher.
Firstly you could try your luck with your current skill set/experience... though at the moment you've got nothing to suggest career change beyond explaining your redundancy situation... but still some sort of management/project management role within a related aerospace, defence sector company could be worth a look.
Other option is of course further training - that you don't remember your degree content isn't necessarily a deal breaker save for perhaps specialist MSc courses.. for example if you were to go for say IT Security related MSc then you might want to look at some intense revision/study of some undergrad material over the next month!
Timing is an issue - you might need to act quickly as courses tend to start at the end of this month/start of next month but that you can support yourself for a year is good here - do a 1 year MSc or MBA perhaps??? (You can get an additional load from the government too to cover tuition so if you have the living expenses sorted then....)
Things to perhaps consider that you could get into using your BSc and that don't necessarily require you to have remembered your undergrad stuff... in fact perhaps your general maturity, work experience will be more relevant useful here:
Some sort of MSc in Project management - you've got management skils remember, you've got a "professional" background - do that then go to the aerospace/defence industry, plenty of former armed forces types there - they'll likely respect your previous pilot background. You don't necessarily need to get into IT project management per se - project management is more general - maybe join a consultancy firm/big 4 etc.. maybe go into an engineering PM role within aerospace etc..
Some sort of conversion MSc in computer science - technically undergrad material, might be revision of stuff you've covered before, might be new stuff too - tailor your dissertation to some area you want to work in (or do it in conjunction with an external supervisor/industry employer) and pivot from MSc into job as BA, PM, Dev whatever...
an MBA - these can get expensive and might not always be worthwhile.... however your situation might be one of those where they could be. The top MBA programs are expensive - London Business School etc.. and you don't mention your undergrad uni... might not be feasible.
The potential alternative here though - maybe check out some of the courses/institutions specific to the UK - again I'm looking at this from potential aerospace/defence... CV being seen by ex-Armed forces officers or similar types... these probs aren't going to ping the interests of big consultancy firms, banks etc..
(might be worth checking out other 1 year masters courses at these places too - not exactly places to appear on world's top MBA lists but for specific UK/defence/aerospace reasons...)
Firstly there is Cranfield - this is military linked, aerospace background also acts as a defence academy for senior officers... could be a good fit for an ex-pilot
https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/
Secondly there is Henley, part of the University of Reading these days but was originally set up as a sort of "Staff college" equivalent for civilian leaders both within the UK's civil service and nationalised & private industry.
https://www.henley.ac.uk/
^^^ either of those could be worth a punt.... especially if your CV is then read by some ex Wing Commander or whatever thinking "Ah, pilot, educated at Cranfield... well there's a good chap" etc..
Also - I presume, with an MBA, if you were to go back to flying, then there are more senior roles you could also fill later on as a pilot and/or progress within, management in the ariline later if you stop flying again - simply by virtue of your MBA and year or two out managing stuff within say the aerospace industry.
Again generally they are expensive, I don't have one myself but I have seen them work for people... for example a developer -> dev manager pursuing an MBA... becoming a more senior dev manager and then after a couple of take overs being a farily senior guy -> being appointed CTO of a newly taken over company... and various devs who started with him being like "WTF, he's a CTO now... how did that happen?"
