This is feedback for the Avengers podcast, specifically the "plot holes" Lee pointed out.
Warning: Spoiler!
Loki can learn about the Hell Carrier and the Avengers Initiative from Hawkeye and the Professor he brainwashed, I'd have to watch it again to see if he explicitly did, but we can easily assume he did in any case. He could also reckon on intervention from his brother and Shield to at least present some form of threat.
In any case, he only wanted to be captured to distract people from the Iridium his team was stealing.
His escape plan from being captured didn't need to involve the Hulk as he had his team coming to free him anyway. He told Black Widow about the Hulk because it was part of a gambit to start people argueing and to splinter the group formed to oppose him. During his stay, he manages to rile up the Avengers to the point where they start to fall out and the Hulk does actually get unleashed.
Loki's feeding Black Widow with this misinformation is the spark of his plan and can be seen as a bluff. For that reason, he does actually bluff Black Widow and she even talks to Hawkeye later in a way which suggests she was actually upset by his words.
As for why fly the Hell Carrier? Because it flies quicker in the air and can move and deploy planes more directly. Given that Loki and the Tesseract could be anywhere in the world, it makes far more sense to fly overland than try sailing everywhere and be forced to fly planes out from the sea to wherever Loki shows up.
One more note is that the Chittauri are the same as the Skrulls. The Chittauri is the name the race uses for themselves in the Ultimates Universe.