And now to another shaky story...on the world's biggest aviation mystery, Malaysian Airlines MH 370, which vanished last year with 239 people on board.

Two months ago the front page of The Weekend Australian suggested it might have solved the puzzle:

The plane truth? Meet the islanders who say they can help Australia find MH370 — Weekend Australian, 4-5 April, 2015

Billed as an exclusive by the paper's award-winning chief reporter, Hedley Thomas, the page-one story suggested that MH370 may have come down near the Maldive Islands just south of India.

Promoted by The Australian on social media, it was welcomed enthusiastically by readers.

... with Hedley Thomas now on the trail of MH370 it's bound to at last be found. His story today absolutely fascinating. — Twitter, @davidjo555, 4th April, 2015

By this time several international news groups had also jumped on Hedley's lead, with the

Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, The Independent and Britain's Daily Express all keen to republish the claims, even if the Express described them as 'astonishing'.

In fact, The Australian's story was neither new nor especially plausible.

Similar claims had been dismissed within days of MH370's disappearance.

There was no trace of the plane in Maldivian airspace, and satellite handshakes had convinced the experts from Boeing, Inmarsat, and the US, Australian and British governments, that MH370 had perished in the southern Indian ocean off western Australia

But after a year of searching had found nothing, Thomas had flown to the Maldives and interviewed six eye-witnesses who breathed new life into the tale:

HUMAAM DHONMAMK: The plane was travelling from this direction to that direction. It was white, big, I was ... remembering the colours of it on that day... — The Australian, 4th April, 2015

As Hedley Thomas explained to Chris Smith on 2GB, the colours were right, the Maldives were in range, and the islanders had never seen anything like it.

HEDLEY THOMAS: This is an island that you could walk around in an hour and a half, Chris. It's, it's - CHRIS SMITH: It's 60 hectares or something, is it? HEDLEY THOMAS: Yeah, it's tiny. CHRIS SMITH: But they are certain they saw a large passenger jet and large passenger jets do not cross the southern atoll, right? HEDLEY THOMAS: That's correct and certainly not at low altitude. — 2GB, Breakfast, 6th April, 2015

Now, setting aside what the experts regard as 'conclusive evidence' that MH370 did not come to the Maldives, there were a number of problems with The Australian's story.

First, the plane was flying in the wrong direction: it should have been coming from the East, yet the witnesses all agreed it came from the North West. Thomas knew this ... but did not mention it in his story.

Second, MH370 would almost certainly have ditched before this mystery plane was sighted, at 6.15 am local time. It only had enough fuel to stay in the air for around 7 ? hours. But these sightings came almost one hour later.

Third ... if MH370 had in fact stayed in the air that long, it should have flown much further-almost to the coast of Africa, according to the international search team.

And fourth, if a Boeing 777 had been so low that its doors were clearly visible, hundreds of people on Kudahuvadhoo should have seen it.

But, Thomas asked in this video, what else could it have been?

HEDLEY THOMAS: Their stories are very similar. If they did not see MH370, what was the aircraft with similar markings, in the early hours of their holiday, Saturday, March 8, 2014? — The Australian, 4th April, 2015

Well, it seems we now have an answer to that question ... Thanks to Le Monde and its Asia Pacific correspondent Florence de Changy, who went to the Maldives last month and published this story two weeks ago (English translation).

L'avion qui n'?tait pas le MH370 The plane which wasn't MH370 — Le Monde, 11th June, 2015

As Le Monde's story revealed there's another island 50 kilometres south east of Kudahuvadhoo called Thimarafushi.

And it has a new airport that was opened in September 2013.

And on the day the mystery plane was sighted, civil aviation records show that a flight touched down on Thimarafushi at 6.33am.

The plane was a twin-engined De Haviland Dash 8 carrying 50 people

... flown and operated by Maldivian, whose livery is white, red and blue, just like MH370.

According to the Maldives Civil Aviation Authority, this plane had flown direct from the capital of Male, and would have tracked close to, or over, the island of Kudahoovadhoo as it came into land.

The authority's chairman, Ibrahim Faizal, told Media Watch, as he told Le Monde:

It does correlate with what the people on the island would have seen. There was this Dash 8 aircraft during this time period and we deduced this has to be that flight. — Ibrahim Faizal, Chairman, Maldives Civil Aviation Authority, 19th June, 2015

And he added:

No one who has seen this information at MCAA thinks it was the MH370. The island council president did not also think it was the MH370. — Ibrahim Faizal, Chairman, Maldives Civil Aviation Authority, 19th June, 2015

So did Hedley Thomas talk to the CAA before writing his article?

He told Media Watch:

I telephoned and emailed several government agencies in the Maldives seeking comment before we published the story ... I did not receive a reply to these e-mailed attempts. My telephone calls were not returned. — Hedley Thomas, National Chief Correspondent, The Australian, 19th June, 2015

Hedley Thomas also told Media Watch it wouldn't have helped if he had talked to the CAA back then because Ibrahim Faizal did not know about the Dash 8 plane until later.

And on Saturday-after Media Watch began making inquiries-Thomas made the same points in The Australian, which announced - on page 13:

MH370 Maldives theory dismissed Hedley Thomas Sightings by villagers in the Maldives in March last year of an aircraft they believed could have been the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 have been reinvestigated by the head of the country's aviation authority, resulting in the theory being all but ruled out. — Weekend Australian, 20-21 June, 2015

Was it ever worth that front-page treatment? I don't think so.