"Modern aircrafts are beautifully built and incredibly safe.
"If the engines were to fail because of some kind of interruption to the fuel flow, they can glide with no problems whatsoever for about 40 minutes at that height."
Mr Learmount said the time which the Malaysia Airlines plane went missing may be significant.
He said: "Between midnight and 2am you're not at a mental or physical performance high - you're at the lowest performance standard in the 24-hour cycle."
The failure to locate the plane so far was not unusual, he added, with investigators taking two years to find the missing Air France 447 plane.
However, Mr Learmount admitted he was "puzzled" why authorities had not divulged a more accurate location of where the aircraft went missing.
"They may not know precisely but they know pretty accurately," he said.
Missing Malaysia Airlines flight: Live updates as it emerges one of 227 passengers 'was using STOLEN passport' - Mirror Online