There are hundreds of potential fire risks among the electronic gadgets people take on board aircraft.

Planes carrying 100 passengers could have around 500 lithium batteries on board when you tot up all the laptops, cameras, e-readers, tablet computers and mobile phones .. and they pose a potential fire danger.

All are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries but there is always a possibility that poor quality or damaged batteries can overheat, causing the device to catch fire.

This is known as thermal runaway, a rapid, uncontrolled chemical reaction within the battery that causes the internal temperature to rise. When one cell in a battery overheats it can produce enough heat - up to 900°C (1652°F) - to cause adjacent cells to overheat. This can cause a lithium battery fire to flare repeatedly.

Research shows there are 1,233 commercial airline companies worldwide and they operate 24,829 planes every day. The number of electronic gadgets in the air at any one time is mind boggling ... and things can go wrong.

Here are a few examples of some recent fire scares on board aircraft.

On August 22 a rechargeable battery on an aircraft flying from New Chitose in Japan to Tokyo ignited shortly after take-off. The fire was extinguished by the cabin crew but two of them suffered minor burns. The plane turned round and returned to New Chitose.

On May 16 this year smoke was detected in the cabin of a Qantas-operated Airbus A380 flying from Sydney to Dallas in the USA.

The smoke was traced to a mobile phone battery and it has been classed as a serious incident by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau which is investigating.

And in March a passenger’s mobile phone burst into flames while she was watching a film on it while flying with Alaska Airlines to Honolulu in Hawaii.

The passenger told a news agency that 8ins flames were coming out of the phone before it was extinguished by the cabin crew.

On Boxing Day 2015 an Air Berlin Airbus flying from Dusseldorf in Germany to Las Palmas in Spain was diverted to Bordeaux for an emergency landing after a mobile phone battery pack started to emit smoke.

* Using an AvSax is a quick and effective way to mitigate the dangers of battery fires on board planes.