That would seem to make sense.
IF(and I’m not entirely confident in the Vietnamese officials that we are all seemingly relying on for info) it turns out to be accurate information that the oil/fuel slicks are 6-10 miles long and parallel roughly 500 meters apart, that would seem to suggest the airplane was losing fuel/oil while still in the air.
What that ultimately means I don’t know. There’s still so many possibilities.
Still, hard to figure out why such a well-built plane with a good track record, flown by a VERY experienced pilot (31 years), would suddenly seem to just drop out of the sky!