Strange Departure Procedures

Leaving San Jose, CA going to Salt Lake City, our plane did an oval around the field before proceding to the first reporting point.


This is apparently standard procedure for a LOUPE ONE departure. Other flights do the same loop going to KRNO and other points northwest. Anybody know specifically why?

Anybody else know of any other similarly interesting departure or arrival procedures?

It appears the purpose is to get the aircraft above arriving traffic at the other Bay Area airports (OAK/SFO/CCR/HWD/PAO/SQL/LVK, among others).

The SJC VORTAC is used to establish the departing aircraft’s route. But they need to cross it at 12,000 feet. Because it is located on the field, there’s no way an aircraft can attain 12,000 unless it circles back to the airport.

Is your graphic a screenshot from your GPS? It looks very similar to the Mapsource map that is used by my Garmin iQue3600.

Dami, correct if I’m wrong but the purpose of the loop is to get SJC Northbound departures above arriving planes coming from Southern California to either SFO or OAK. Correct?

Isn’t that what he said?

Like CFIJames said, that’s what I said, although you can be forgiven if you don’t know that all of the airports I mentioned are north of SJC.

Coming into KCAK from the south, you make a wide circle to the right if you’re approaching Rwy. 19 or 23. On one of my AirTran flights from MCO, we did a complete circle around the Goodyear blimp north of the field near KAKR (which isn’t far). It *felt like *the pilot was showing off, but I’m sure at that point in the approach (along with being a fully-loaded 717) he was following either standard approach procedures or orders from ATC.