A Malaysian official involved in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has contradicted public claims from the Malaysian government by saying that its military knowingly and continuously tracked the plane on radar for more than an hour after communication with ground control was severed in the early hours of March 8.

The anonymous air force official told Chinese web portal Tencent that despite initial claims that they could not be certain, the Malaysian military knew very well that the plane they were tracking on radar was flight MH370 and followed it as it climbed above the Boeing 777's approved altitude of 45,000ft and took a sharp turn to the west before descending unevenly to 23,000ft on the approach to the island of Penang. The plane then climbed back to 35,000ft and headed northwest towards the Indian Ocean, with the final reading showing it above the tiny island of Pulau Perak in the Strait of Malacca at around 2.40am.

Though they had known this all along, Malaysian authorities did not reveal this crucial information until March 15, a week after the plane's disappearance, the official said. It also meant that Malaysia knew from the beginning that the plane — if it had crashed — was likely in the Strait of Malacca region on the west side of the country as opposed to the South China Sea on the east side, where dozens of ships and aircraft from other countries searched fruitlessly for days, the official added.