Rat5
Excellent point about the pitch.
Not a handling related problem ? I disagree to some extent.
A pilot used to fly manually/raw data develops an instinctive scanning reflex and he/she instinctively continues to use it even when he/she kindly lets the autopilot have fun with his/her aeroplane. [agreed, in a less agressive way, but still...]. So the detection of a wrong pitch at an early enough stage would have occurred, had the pilot been of the "flying-type" category. That's another angle whereby a reasonably good handler would have saved the day.