A little closer look.
Those 141 incidents involved
batteries of all kinds, not just Li-ion, and Li-ion made up less than half of the incidents. There was only one incident that caused a plane to return and that was from a battery in a passenger's digital camera. In nearly every case where the batteries were cargo, the incident was caused by
improperly "packaged" batteries--in backpacks, in devices, in boxes--where the terminals made contact and overheated the battery. Nearly every cargo incident was discovered by baggage handlers before or after the flight landed.
There were no cargo incidents that affected the normal flight of an aircraft, and
only one incident where a passenger flight had to delay take-off due to smoke in the cargo area from batteries. Many of the incidents were with passenger devices, and in every case, the incident was resolved with no danger to the plane.
What this says is that
transporting of any battery carries some risk. The fact that many were Li-ion is a
function of their wide spread use in devices in recent years. It also shows that
packaging for transport is crucial so the battery terminal cannot come in contact with anything that can cause a short. It means that Li-ion batteries are
not inherently dangerous.
This is not to refute any posts, because all it takes is one time. I post this just to put the data into context and
reduce the hysteria generated by the press about the "danger of Lithium-ion batteries."
All batteries are potentially dangerous cargo. The only thing I would challenge is that a fire in the cargo hold from batteries would have a very, very low likelihood of disabling the crew and passengers and allow the plane to fly for seven hours.
Read the data for yourselves, and draw your own conclusions:
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ash/ash_programs/hazmat/aircarrier_info/media/battery_incident_chart.pdf