Originally Posted by Gamma Burst
Exactly. It would seriously injury or kill him, so he used a bit of basic physics to help him. The notion that he flew in the same
direction of the fall is almost insane.
He's tough, no doubt, however we shouldn't forget he needed to avoid the shots from the jet and he was injured by Loki's blade later.
According to basic physics he didn't do a thing to help him, apart from landing on soil instead of metal. He jumps out (if he flew he would have landed further away from the cage, nor would he have landed head first) sideways, which does absolutely nothing to change the force downwards. The only way he changes the speed of his fall is if he jumps up.
But, as I always say, the laws of physics shouldn't be taken into account too much when superheroes are around. For example, things like Hulk punching the leviathan would cause Hulk to fly away because he has so little mass compared to the leviathan, and the force he's producing. And even if he didn't fly away he wouldn't have been able to cause enough traction with his feet to slow it down like he did.