Lithium Batteries grounded Boeing 787

This article caught my eye, because I am heavy into aviation.

After another emergency, more trouble for 787 jet - Yahoo! News

The article discusses smelling something burning in flight that turns out to be a leaking Lithium battery.

Funny, after reading so many LPF posts about the potential dangers of Lithium batteries, charging them outside the home, putting out Lithium-based fires, and so forth, that when I read this article, it got me thinking.

Would I want to fly on a plane with Lithium batteries aboard? No surprises why they use them, being so light in weight. But it has me thinking.

Read that on my phone last night... my first thought was "Damn ultrafires again."

Considering the number of items out there with lithium batteries, I'm actually somewhat surprised we don't see more stories about them exploding, catching fire, etc,.

Personally I'm not overly worried. Though hopefully this will force the development of even safer more efficient batteries.

(I'm not sure that anymore pressure could be applied than there is already being applied by the mobile/phone/tablet industry though.)

They shoulda picked more expensive batteries.

Someone I know recently had their phone battery pop next to their head. Not enough details to know what happened. One thing to remember with phone batteries, a lot of them have switched to 4.35V cells. Replacing with an older 4.2V cell may result in the phone overcharging it.