That wonderful GEE-WIZZ glass instrument panel is what killed those folks. That and not training and making the young pilots to fly the airplane without all the electronics.
To be certified, the aircraft must be able to fly and land safely after a total electrical failure. It can be done, but not if you neglect this configuration in training the pilots.
No, the glass cockpit didn't kill them - it was the bad air-speed sensors that did it. And the Airbus cannot be flown without the electronics -- there are no steel cables between the controls and the flying surfaces, everything is electronics with electrical signal from the controls to the computers and electrical signal to the control-surface electrical actuators.