catplaystation - totally agree. It is clearly ludicrous to listen to the hideous lawyers charming the birds out the trees with 'proof' that night is day and black is white. Clearly, the performance of the pilots was the single biggest factor in this terrible accident. Nonetheless, given their dismal performance it would have been great to avoid a stall if technicaly possible!
EMIT - I do, of course, agree with you that the pilots are absolutely critical to a successful outcome. As you rightly pointed out through the A320 accident in Bangalore, if you have complete buffoons in the flight deck who choose to fly a totally serviceable aircraft into the ground there is only so much you can do to stop them! Nonetheless,a 'triangle of protection' can be identified - pilot performance (through screening at selection, knowledge, training, experience etc), company culture and aircraft capability. If all three are attacked then there is a way out of these types of accidents. I do accept that the A320 series is not perfect, but it is nonetheless a genuinely 'smart' machine which provides significant, but not foolproof, protections against pilot mishandling.