Question about the hovercraft in the ending of Matrix 1

At the end of the first Matrix movie, Neo is still inside the Matrix fighting agent Smith. The hovercraft gets an alert how sentinels are coming to them and they have 5 minutes until they reach the hovercraft.

Throughout the movies as far as I know, people have been able to be plugged in the Matrix, while the hovercraft can do other tasks like move and stuff.

So why didn't they start to escape from the sentinels, while waiting for Neo to come in the real world? Is there some reason they didn't do that or is it just because of suspense? In the Revelations for example they fight hundreds of sentinels, shooting them with the machine gun turrets while escaping. Why couldn't they have done this?