To meet the immediate need for decarbonization of the aviation industry, leveraging existing commercial processes and feedstocks will be the most efficient path toward producing SAF in the near-term future. Syngas is one of the most attractive feed sources as it can be derived from a broad range of renewable and waste feedstocks via gasification, while benefiting from existing infrastructure throughout the petrochemical industry. Of the existing industrial processes for transforming syngas to synthetic fuels, none produce aviation fuel efficiently; however, methanol synthesis followed by methanol-to-olefin (MTO) processing offers an already established and active commercialized pathway to produce mixed light olefins, primarily ethylene and propylene. This mixture can potentially be directly oligomerized to jet-range products in a single reaction step. If demonstrated with high yield and selectivity, elevating this single operation unit to industrial scale would complete an end-to-end commercial pathway for producing SAF from syngas derived from various ecologically disadvantaged feedstocks.