[onli]

It's especially frustrating for me because i remember all the times i crashed in a simulator due to stall until i understood what was happening. I don't even remember the name of the simulator, i'm not even an amateur-pilot - but that makes that report almost unbelievable, that something like this happened in a real flight to a real pilot.

[lutorm]

unbelievable, that something like this happened in a real flight to a real pilot

Actually, most fatal crashes are "stall-spin accidents", where pilots stall the airplane near the ground without sufficient altitude to recover. But those are not cases where you keep the airplane in a deep stall for 90s. When you stall an airplane in VFR, it's obvious what happens.

No one would persist in keeping the airplane at 20 degrees positive pitch while descending at thousands of feet per minute without realizing the airplane is stalled. But here, without outside references and with obvious confusion about the state of the airplane, it was apparently beyond these guys. (Except the captain, whose comment about "no, don't climb" seems to indicate he was on the right track, but by then it was too late.)

[chc]

Actually, only the less experienced copilot, Bonin, appeared to be in favor of climbing. The other repeatedly told him to level out or dive, and apparently thought Bonin had listened (which would explain why he was so baffled). As the OP points out, neither that copilot nor the captain seemed to realize that Bonin had been futilely trying to climb the whole time until that moment at the end when the captain ordered him to stop.