I don’t know what flightplan that specific airliner used, but unless instructed otherwise by ATC, you need to follow the procedures. I guess it’s possible that ATC gave these pilots a convenient direct routing! They might have departed without following any SID at all and just got vectored out. This can be in the interest of everyone involved, saving time and fuel in the process.
I am not familiar with the operations of this airport so I can’t say for a fact what happened. What I can say is that none of the departures fly over Ludwigsfelde and then turn directly north!
Looking at FR24 data, it does seem like they have a habit of making traffic proceed directly to some waypoint before the departure procedure has been fully flown
This one is flying the GERG2N departure:
This one flies the same departure to begin with, but clearly receives a very long direct routing before the procedure is finished:
We currently do not have a “direct to” feature, and this is a very peculiar scenario that I am not sure how we would handle if we had the feature.
In your scenario, our route calculator did add GERGA as the first waypoint in your route which means that departures that route you to that waypoint would be expected to be used. This does not prevent you from aborting the procedure halfway through and, for example, proceeding directly to RITEV which is directly north! It would not follow any procedure or chart, but that happens in the real world too when instructed by ATC.
Kind Regards,
Malte