Given their woeful training history and complete lack of basic CRM, they don't seem to have had the capacity to question why they were flying that night, let alone how they should best conduct the flight,
Very scary that pilots with such low standards are allowed to hold licences and fly pax.
How bad a pilot do you have to be to confuse nose up attitude with nose down? A 5 degree nose up attitude in a 139 is accelerative - no need to push the nose down further.