Ground staff and cabin crew can easily transition into other customer service areas, for pilots it's not so easy as our skills are highly specialised and narrowly focused. The attributes such as bearing responsibility and making decisions under pressure can help in other areas but they aren't hard paper qualifications. Once you've been out of any field for a long time it becomes hard to get back in, working practices change, new technology develops and new laws are introduced. Show a motor mechanic who last worked on cars in the late 1990s, a brand new vehicle today and he'd be hard pressed to do an oil change.
The ability to sell is a highly useful skill as it never goes out of date, is in demand in most sectors and offers high earning potential.
Nurses have been in such high demand that at times, health authorities have offered to employ and retrain those with previous experience who have been out of the profession for a few years.
The usual fall backs of having a Responsible Server of Alcohol certificate, a taxi driver authorisation or a security guard licence can at least put food on the table between jobs