This is the case in all Airbus aircraft since the A320. In "Normal Law" you can't pitch beyond 30 degrees up, can't bank more then 67 degrees and if you fly too slowly then Full Thrust will be commanded. (you can still do quite a lot in Normal Law as the systems intervene just before things go too far to be dangerous, Airbus displays where they twist and turn around the sky are conducted in Normal Law)
The Automated systems helped with the Hudson River, the autotrim allowed the pilots to concentrate on finding a landing site.
However in the case of AF447, with no reliable airspeed indication the anti stall protection was deactivated, the A330 essentially reverted to "Alternative Law" (aka "Boeing mode") and the pilots managed to stall it by not following procedures. A Bus Driver I know had a lesson on that in the simulator recently, if he followed the procedure (pitch to [X] degrees - power to [YY]% - aircraft will settle at a known safe speed) then all well and good, if he pulled back on the stick as they did the aircraft stalled, once stalled the aircraft was unrecoverable! He also said the Turbulence (recreated from the Flight Recorder data) was horrific!
Err, couple of points there.
1) There is no direct relationship with pitch angle (deck angle) and stall. 30 degrees pitch up is meaningless regarding stall - an aeroplane can stall way below that, or way above it. It's excessive angle of attack (angle between wing chord line and relative airflow) that causes a stall, and that is not neccessarily related to either speed or deck angle.
2) In AF477, the crew had, apart from a brief period at the start of the upset, full and accurate cockit indications of all parameters, including pitch angle, air speed, and power. It stalled and remained stalled all the way down to the sea because a very inexperienced P2 held his sidestick fully back! Read the report (it was released on PPRuNe). It makes interesting reading! The aeroplane could have been un-stalled and flown safely away at any point until there was insufficient height to recover (perhaps the last few thousand feet) had the sidestick been pushed forward to un-stall the wing, then normal attitude restored.
3) It is standard proceedure on any aeroplane, from a Tiger Moth to a B747, if airspeed indications are lost to set cruise power and attitude. The speed will then look after itself.
