gums, I agree, yaw had nothing to do with this crash. Pulling back on the SS for no reason did and they would have been better rolling off into a steep bank than pitching up into a deep stall. He must have thought he was stall protected and forgot he was in alternate law. I still would like to know of those 2900 hrs how many were flying and how many merely monitoring an autopilot.
When I upgraded to captain from the MD80 to the B737 200 I did a lot of hand flying in the 80 to get my basic skills back to what they were. Flying skills can not be maintained by monitoring, only by doing.