Due to the emontionally-charged nature of this particular thread and the almost impossible task of having a rational discussion on civil aircraft design as embodied in Boeing and Airbus aircraft, I will perhaps steer clear of too much discussion on this subject for the moment. Suffice to say, that difficult questions have to be asked over any aircraft that could allow this to happen. As others will rightly point out, 99.9999% of 737 approaches occur without incident, but in our line of work we should consider the 0.00001% case. A combination of factors occurred here (very well laid out by flyburg a short time ago), and as a result many people died who did not need to. No one is going to come out of this well - Turkish Airlines, Boeing and the individual pilots all had key parts in the jigsaw of factors that led to this accident. I trust that even the most hardened Boeing supporters will be willing to say that this is not an acceptable fault to have lurking in the background. As an Airbus operator, I would put my hand up and say that there are certain features of Airbuses which are potential glitches to inexperienced crews on type. Nonetheless this particular accident would have been almost impossible on an Airbus, and I hope that future Boeings will introduce a facility, as has been present in Airbuses for over 20 years, that prevents the crew from stalling a serviceable aircraft (or indeed one suffering minor snags).
You will never fully eliminate pilot error, however alarming and fundamental those errors may be. Nor will you totally eradicate company cultures that permit dangerous situations to develop without them being instantly challenged. Both of these 'human factors' considerations are clearly something we should aspire to change, but that is a very long term aim. Therefore the final protection has to be the aircraft itself. In this day and age the technology exists, and is in daily operation around the world, to provide significant protections against the first 2 lines of defence failing. I hope that in the future the world's biggest airliner manufacturers will take full advantage of the readily-available and proven technology to provide maximum protection to the travelling public.