Commercial aircraft provide emergency oxygen to passengers to protect them from drops in cabin pressure. Chemical oxygen generators are not used for the cockpit crew. In narrow body airliners, for each row of seats there are overhead masks and oxygen generators. In wide body airliners, such as the DC-10 and IL-96, the canisters and oxygen masks are mounted in the top portion of the seat backs, since the ceiling is too high above the passengers. If a decompression occurs, the panels are opened either by an automatic pressure switch or by a manual switch, and the masks are released. When the passengers pull down on the mask they remove the retaining pins and trigger the production of oxygen.

Accidental activation of improperly shipped expired generators caused the ValuJet Flight 592 crash. An ATA DC-10, Flight 131, was also destroyed while parked at O'Hare Airport, on August 10, 1986. The cause was the accidental activation of an oxygen canister, contained in the back of a broken DC-10 seat, being shipped in the cargo compartment to a repair station. There were no fatalities or injuries because the plane contained no passengers when the fire broke out.