To be fair to Boeing, this Honeywell ELT has nothing to do with them and is on thousands of planes. It seems it may just have been an unlucky coincidence that the first fire was on a 787.

On top of that, there are probably several hundred consumer devices with Lithium ion batteries on board the average flight, none of which are avionics grade, and more than a few probably stowed out of sight in the overhead lockers. It's surprising there haven't been more fires; or it's evidence that these spontaneous battery fires really are quite rare.

To quote Mercedes car commercial:

>Perception is always reality