Spaceflight could be as normal as air travel within 100 years, says top aviation boss

He added that if air travel had been pioneered under the same restrictions facing the aviation industry today it might never have happened.

The 62-year-old, who is originally from the Maryhill area of Glasgow and still commutes every weekend from Airbus' headquarters in Toulouse, France to his home in Ayrshire, was speaking to the Herald at the aerospace giant's annual press conference.

Mr Williams said: "It's a difficult challenge when you look at the recent experience we had with Virgin Galactic [crashing a test flight in the Mojave desert in October 2014].

"I have to say if Wilbur and Orville Wright were first flying in the same environment that exists today, from a legal and oversight point of view, I kind of suspect that we might not be flying today.

"When you're developing any new form of technology, there is a patent risk so I think we have to be realistic. It's still at the cutting edge and it will take time. It took aviation a hundred years to get to where it is today.

"We take it for granted that we can go to the airport, get on an A380, it weighs 560 tonnes, it takes off smoothly, it flies to 40,000ft where outside the aircraft you would freeze to death - but that would be okay because you couldn't breathe anyway - and then you're going to sit there drinking your gin and tonic, watching a movie, and eat a three-course meal.

"Wilbur and Orville Wright probably didn't have that vision in mind, but thank goodness we had people who were visionaries. And I think space transport will need that same kind of approach - people who are a bit off-the-wall and visionary, and I think there are people out there who will push it forward and in 100 years it may become as normal as air travel."

Six sites in Scotland, including Prestwick Airport, have been shortlisted by the Department for Transport as potential locations for Europe's first commercial spaceport. The UK Government, which is also considering bases in Cornwall and Snowdonia, wants to establish the facility by 2018.

Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has been at a forefront of developing commercial space tourism and had hoped to launch the first passenger flight by the end of 2014. However, the endeavour suffered a major blow when his test craft, SpaceShip Two, exploded over the Mojave desert, killing a crew member. Nonetheless, Branson said it would not deter him from pursuing the venture.

Mr Williams, who also sits on the board of the overarching Airbus Group - the parent company whose divisions include helicopters, defence and space technology - is now one of the most senior figures in global aviation.

He first joined Airbus, Europe's rival to Boeing, in 2000 as the managing director and general manager of its UK arm. By 2004 he was Airbus' executive vice president in charge of procurement before taking control of their programmes division, a role which would see him head up development of aircraft including the highly anticipated A380 superjumbo, the largest passenger plane flying today.

As of this month, he was elevated to COO - becoming one of only four senior executives at the top of Airbus.

It is a stunning achievement for someone who started their career, fresh from the now-demolished Woodside Secondary School, as a teenage apprentice at Rolls Royce Aero Engines in Renfrew. There Mr Williams completed an HNC in production engineering - he would not graduate from university until his mid-30s - before going on to occupy increasingly senior roles in a number of UK manufacturing companies, including British Aerospace at Prestwick Airport and later BAE Systems.

His focus is now firmly on aviation. In his new role, he is responsible for overseeing all 11 of Airbus manufacturing sites in France, Germany, Spain, the UK and China, as well as all aspects of engineering, procurement, quality control, IT systems, and supply chain management - a major undertaking when you consider that each individual aircraft is made up of around four million parts each winging their way from different suppliers in various corners of the globe.

One of the major challenges will be ramping up production to keep pace with orders. The annual results unveiled on Tuesday revealed that Airbus now has its largest backlog on record - that is, the number of planes ordered by airlines and other customers which have yet to be delivered.

There are enough orders on the books at present to keep Airbus busy for the next nine years on current rates of production, which doubled during Mr Williams' decade-long tenure in charge of programmes but still vary from around a month for a single aisle plane such as the A320 to six months for the A380.

Demand from Asia in particular is fuelling orders.

"Whereas in previous times when our customer base was predominantly in North America and Europe, then we would probably have felt the pain of [the 2008] downturn," said Mr Williams. "In reality, we felt nothing. We carried on - in fact, we increased production, which is kind of unique for most industries. That was mainly because of Asia - India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Asian region in general was very strong.

"We can see that over the next few years China will bypass America as having the biggest customer base for aircraft. Countries like India are also having strong growth because aviation is really just in the very early days there and you only have to move a very small number of people from the Indian rail network onto air travel and you have a huge market.

"Similarly, if you go to a country like Indonesia - an archipelago of some 2000 islands where there's than to travel by ferry because you can't built a high-speed rail link, and you see that aviation is the way to deal with it.

"In those countries you've got a strong GDP, a growing middle class, and of course that middle class want to do the same as the middle class in Europe: to travel and experience new things. "And purely in terms of economic growth - it's more efficient for people to get business done by travelling by air."

The future of aircraft design will be led by the need for cuts in emissions and noise, said Mr Williams.

This is underlined by the launch of Airbus' newest plane last year, the A320neo, which has reduced fuel consumption by 20 per cent - welcome news for airline profits and emissions targets. "If we look at growth in aviation, we're seeing that it grows on average 4.5-5 per cent a year," said Mr Williams. "That means every 15 years we double the number of aircraft that are in service.

"To do that, we have to do it in a responsible way. So the importance of the A320neo is not just because of the 20 per cent less fuel burn, it's because every neo in service replacing an older aircraft will save 3,500 tonnes per aeroplane per year in carbon emissions.

"So it has a significant impact on the carbon footprint and that's important in terms of trying to get neutral growth in emissions as the industry grows. And at the same time, the aircraft is significantly quieter . If you're working at a lot of regional airports, the reality is that most of the airports are within an urban community and so what we have to do is find ways of getting the noise footprint contained within the perimeter of the airport. That is one of the powerful things we can do."