the pilot did during the final moments of that flight. hold on for a moment. because i want the you to react to this next report. andrew stevens is joining us now, correspondent in kuala lumpur in malaysia. up date our viewers, andrew, what we re learning precisely, and what it may suggest. reporter: well, we re hearing, wolf, now the last reported position, last position the plane was seen, was over a small island in the strait of malacca. this is on the subpoena sit side of the country of malaysia to the flight path where it s supposed to be going. what we can tell you at this stage is that the plane officially was last contacted and was last seen at a way point heading towards vietnam on its way towards beijing. then the transponders apparently were switched off. the second it was still able to be tracked by radar.
this is cnn breaking news. and the breaking news, some more mysterious information just coming into cnn from the malaysian air force. the malaysian air force says it has now traced the last travel of malaysia airlines flight 370 to a very small island in the straits of malacca, according to the senior malaysian air force official. the official declined to be named, because he s not authorized to speak to the news media. but the official says that about 2:40 a.m. local time, the civilian and military radar lost all contact with the aircraft, strait of malacca is in a body of water that separates the peninsula from the indonesian island of sumatra. it s many hundreds of miles from the usual flight path for aircraft traveling from kuala lumpur to beijing. so it was way, way off course, according to this malaysian air force. no explanation, obviously,
it s called primary radar. the plane then did what apparently looks like a u-turn, went back across the country of malaysia to the other side, the west coast, which is the strait of malacca, and was last seen on radar over a little island which is in the middle of the strait of malacca, between malaysia and indonesian, about 200 kilometers or so, 150 miles off the west coast of malaysia. that s what we re hearing at the moment. we don t know what happened then. but the actual plane disappeared, the radar contact disappeared at around about 2:40 a.m. that s about two hours after it took off and about an hour after the its last official position, just as it was entering see aetna mays air space from malaysian air space. so from this point, looks like evidence is growing, the malaysian air force, we re hearing we ve been talking to a senior air force official here. he can t give his name, because he s not he s not responsible
but by looking at what they re doing with the search pattern, that pattern has been going further and further out across the straits of the malacca, into where that air where that plane was last seen and sort of unofficially, if you like. just from my understanding of this, wolf, when the plane was last officially seen, the transponders were on. it was sending a signal which verified it was that particular aircraft. when the transponders were turned off, a primary radar which is used by both the military and the civilian authorities, continued to track the plane or track what they thought was the plane. they couldn t actually confirm whether it was the plane. but certainly it looked like it was the same plane carrying on. but just veering off and going back over malaysia. so that alerted them to the fact that they had had possibly it turned around, and they started searching in that area a day after the initial search got going in the area where it was last officially seen. so yes, t