Originally Posted by
occasional
Is anyone able to explain why an aircraft taking off southwards from Malaga but with a destination north of Madrid turns right and returns over the airport, rather than turning left and taking the shorter route northwards ?
The standard departure routing has aircraft departing on the BLN 3C, for reasons known only to the Spanish. You do occasionally get a Left turn after departure. Most pilots will request it when they get passed to the departure radar controller after takeoff. It's then down to capacity and controller workload as to whether you get the turn or not.
