4 minutes is a very long time. How can 3 highly qualified pilots persist in maintaining a stall for so long without someone figuring out that they have got it wrong.
It happened at Roselawn as well (ATR-72).
I'd like to see the data for roll angle. At Roselawn the stall was coupled with wild, violent roll oscillations. The pilots did not recognize a stalled condition.
In Air France's case, with that kind of sink rate their pitch angle was 16 degrees or less, and roll was tossing through 40 degrees each way. They were sitting at 100% thrust. Perhaps they were thinking of structural problems or something else - but they must not have recognized the stall....
The airplane’s pitch attitude did not exceed 15 degrees and the engines’ N1’s were close to 100%. The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees.