There has been only one airbus crash with loss of life in the last 5 years, the A300 in JFK with 260 deaths.
The A340 Air France crash had no deaths, and it was weather related, in 2001 an Air Transat A330 glided to a landing in the Azores, no deaths, it was pilot error.
Boeing
2005
Kam Air in Pakistan, 737-200, 104 dead
Saha Airlines, Iran, 707, 3 dead
Heilios Airlines, Greece 737-300 121 dead
TANS Airlines, Peru, 737-200, 40 dead
Mandala Airlines, Indonesia, 737-200 99 dead
Belleview Airlines, Nigeria, 737-200 117 dead
Southwest Airlines, Chicago Midway, 737-700 1 dead on ground
2004
Flash Air, Egypt, 737-300, 148 dead
2003
Air Algerie, Algeria 737-200, 102 dead
Sudan Airways, Sudan 737-200, 116 dead
Union des Transports Aeriens de Guinee, Benin, 727 140 dead
2002
Garuda, Indonesia, 737-300 1 dead
TAME Airlines, Columbia 727 92 dead
China Airlines, Taiwan 747-200 225 dead
Egypt Air, Tunisia, 737-500 14 dead
2001
Thai Airways Thailand, 737-400 1 dead
According to the last 5 years of travel, being in a 737 variant is the most dangerous.
I left out all the MCDonnell Douglas planes, but there were plenty.
More data, here
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/database.htm
Good work, Central Scrutiniser. There's a lot of anti-Airbus xenophobia in FreeRepublic. This is another example. Had it been in a Boeing product it wouldn't have generated a tenth of the derogatory comments (yes it could happen in any glass-cockpit aircraft).
Every major airline has aircraft systems incidents, practically on a daily basis. Hydraulics, electrical, flight controls, pressurisation, fuel, engines, etc. I've seen or read of many more serious incidents that never made the news.
This one was handled routinely. It only lasted for 90 seconds and they had enough instrumentation left to aviate, navigate, and communicate. They had an attitude indicator, at least one INS (on internal battery, probably three on battery), and a VHF radio. There was no loss of altitude and no loss of separation. The crew probably filed a safety report after landing (for their company) and that was it.