If my memory serves me right; the pilots of the 'bus that crashed into trees flew below the pre-briefed fly-past altitude, thus sending the aircraft, unintentionally, into landing mode. Nothing wrong with the aircraft. An Airbus can make a go-around from low altitude just as well as a Boeing airplane, and good airmanship dictates that you should know your airplane.
I do, however, think that Airbus might have taken too great a leap into automated envelope protection, because all pilots have been trained on, and perhaps flown a substantial number of hours on "conventional" aircraft. For the new generation of pilots, especially low-timers, the Airbus philosophy will work just fine, because they will not suffer as much from negative transfer of learning.
What is needed for the more experienced, "old-school", pilots, is a good training programme and the companies selecting pilots with the ability to absorb new consepts (not just upgrading on the basis of seniority alone).
This could be a good reason why Boeing sorta' eases the new technology into the cockpit step-by-step.
And might I mention the words of a retired B747 captain, who once commented on the way companies treat their enemies' technology and research: They usually go through five phases:
Ignore - ridicule - attack - copy - steal.
Me thinks Boeing is somewhere around the copy/steal phase ;-)
Cross.