Does the Boeing B787 have safety issues with its battery and windshield? AVHerald has reported


An incident of battery overheating. That is after the aircraft has been grounded and parts of the battery system redesigned. AVHerald provides a detailed report on the battery issue. 
An incident of a cracked windshield. A cracked windshield typically results in declaring an emergency. AVHerald lists 15 incidents of cracked windshields since 2012. This happens in other aircraft too, but apparently not in the same way. On other aircraft, only the outer of several layers cracks after some time. On the 787 it seems to happen on start or landing, always resulting in a return to the airport. It should be noted, that the 787 windows have fewer layers and larger windows than any other type.


Also Forbes reports, that there have been at least four incidents with the batteries after the FAA mandated four-month grounding, and a physics professor at Canada's Dalhousie University states battery failures are an indication of a problem within the cells. 

Incidents with both issues have been reported since 2013, when the 787 was allowed back into service after the FAA mandated four-month grounding.

To me reading this report is disturbing. 


Doesn't this mean, that the aircraft is flown with knowingly unsafe battery and windshield? 
As a passenger, does one have to be worried about flying in this particular type?
The 787 is among the safest airliners currently flying. At the time of writing, it has been involved in zero hull loss incidents and there have been zero fatalities due to incidents.

While you can find numerous incidents including those you mention there have been exactly zero total losses and no loss of life on board (due to the aircraft itself - its possible people may have perished on board due to other factors not involved in aircraft safety).

It should be noted that A boeing report on this subject points out (page 19) that most of the aircraft which have had zero hull losses have also not accumulated 1 million departures. Therefore it might be too early to tell if there is any fundamental safety issues with these types. However, there has been 50+ years of learning about safety with regard to aircraft operations - and all of that feeds in to these modern aircraft. 

All in, I would consider flying on the B787 to be objectively safe (or, at very least equally so as other similar airliners). Does there exist some "wrinkles" to be ironed out? Perhaps - but they do not affect the overall safety of this type.