It didn't strike me when I first saw the movie, but open re-watching it, I was wondering, why didn't Cap just bail out of the plane after he had steered it into a nosedive? He has clearly been shown to jump out of planes without a parachute and even tall buildings, landing safely.
So why not just jump out of the plane at the last moment? Why crash with it?
"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you!"
Ultimately - the 'out of story' reason is that, no matter what, he needed to end up in the ice.
In story reason - Because that's not who he is. It's the grenade scene all over again (only this time it's not a test). Even if it means his life, he's going to stay on the plane and make sure something like the autopilot doesn't re-engage (because that's a big ass plane and it would take him time to get from the cockpit to somewhere that he can jump off of - which could be enough time for the autopilot to re-engage, remember this isn't exactly a normal plane)
And technically, he's never shown in this film jumping without a parachute (it may not be something he realizes he can do yet)... in fact, even in the first Avengers film he still uses a parachute. It's not until The Winter Soldier - after he's been thawed in modern day for a couple years, that we see him really start to push his abilities to the extreme
Nillindeiel
Agent Hill: ...Then aliens invaded New York and were beaten back, by among others, a giant green monster, a costumed hero from the 40's.... and a god.
Agent Ward: I don't think Thor is technically a god.
Hill: Well...you haven't been near his arms.
~Agents of SHIELD; Season 1 Episode 1 "Pilot"
Good explanation nillindeiel
Steve may have also intended to cause whatever remaining bombs on the plane to detonate on impact as he assumed that they must have been extremely dangerous to have been labeled only one bomb per city.
A single conventional bomb dropped on a city the size of New York would have done very little damage.
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Weren't they Hydra/Tesseract bombs?
shareThey indeed were HYDRA/Tesseract powered bombs but the way that Armin Zola described the Red Skull's plan to Col Phillips the bombs must have been especially devastating WMDs.
Steve made the ultimate sacrifice of a controlled crash and flew the plane into the ice for a reason.
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Solid explanation.
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