It's not that uncommon. At GLA and EDI you often route North to the field and fly a left downwind fro me easterly runways before turning southbound. ALC and AGP involve flying runway heading for some miles, then a DME arc and then flying a radial back toward to field. I've timed 7 minutes of flying time before flying over the airfield to fly north. So that's 7 minutes before you have even got anywhere. Multiply that by the amount of flights operated at an airport and that is a lot of wasted fuel.