Narrative:

The aircraft was very light with only approximately 5 passengers. We were assigned departure from runway xx with the zzzzz 5 departure.the first officer was conducting the takeoff and I was acting as pilot monitoring for the departure. During the rotation the first officer abruptly pitched immediately to 15 degrees nose up attitude with the flaps set at 15 degrees. It caught me a little off guard initially and I focused on the possibility of striking the tail and exceeding 15 degrees nose up attitude. No tail strike or pitch exceedance occurred however; the departure procedure requires a climbing right turn to heading 189 degrees to intercept the ZZZ VOR 159 degree radial to the southeast. The FMS and flight guidance commanded the turn climbing through 400 feet AGL and the turn was initiated per the guidance. Unfortunately; due to the light aircraft weight and initial climb rate the aircraft had not yet passed the ZZZ 159 degree radial therefore no intercept displayed on the FMS. At the moment I was busy with retracting flaps and flows and did not notice that the intercept would not occur off the current aircraft's heading. It was probably 10 to 15 seconds after completion of the turn to 189 degrees that we noticed the error and pointed it out to the first officer for correction. ZZZ departure made the comment that it appeared we missed the intercept radial and that he had received a low altitude alert on the aircraft due to the heading towards higher terrain to the southwest. Fortunately; it was a clear night and we were able to maneuver the aircraft back to the departure procedure with only minimal course deviation from published.once established at cruise we discussed the situation and I mentored the first officer on how I thought he was being excessive on his initial pitch attitude. He indicated that he was concerned primarily about exceeding flap speeds and that was his reasoning for initially pitching directly to 15 degrees. I pointed out that it would be better to pitch to 10 degrees and allow the aircraft to accelerate; and then increase to 15 degrees pitch as necessary to maintain below 160 kts airspeed with the flaps at 15 degrees.this is a threat leaving ZZZ that I had never previously considered would happen. With the current light loads due to the coronavirus I can see where increased vigilance on departure is required. This was a very busy phase of flight!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Captain reported deviating from charted course on departure in part because the aircraft was climbing quicker than normal due to a very low passenger count as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Narrative: The aircraft was very light with only approximately 5 passengers. We were assigned departure from Runway XX with the ZZZZZ 5 Departure.The First Officer was conducting the takeoff and I was acting as pilot monitoring for the departure. During the rotation the First Officer abruptly pitched immediately to 15 degrees nose up attitude with the flaps set at 15 degrees. It caught me a little off guard initially and I focused on the possibility of striking the tail and exceeding 15 degrees nose up attitude. No tail strike or pitch exceedance occurred however; the departure procedure requires a climbing right turn to heading 189 degrees to intercept the ZZZ VOR 159 degree radial to the southeast. The FMS and flight guidance commanded the turn climbing through 400 feet AGL and the turn was initiated per the guidance. Unfortunately; due to the light aircraft weight and initial climb rate the aircraft had not yet passed the ZZZ 159 degree radial therefore no intercept displayed on the FMS. At the moment I was busy with retracting flaps and flows and did not notice that the intercept would not occur off the current aircraft's heading. It was probably 10 to 15 seconds after completion of the turn to 189 degrees that we noticed the error and pointed it out to the First Officer for correction. ZZZ Departure made the comment that it appeared we missed the intercept radial and that he had received a low altitude alert on the aircraft due to the heading towards higher terrain to the southwest. Fortunately; it was a clear night and we were able to maneuver the aircraft back to the departure procedure with only minimal course deviation from published.Once established at cruise we discussed the situation and I mentored the First Officer on how I thought he was being excessive on his initial pitch attitude. He indicated that he was concerned primarily about exceeding flap speeds and that was his reasoning for initially pitching directly to 15 degrees. I pointed out that it would be better to pitch to 10 degrees and allow the aircraft to accelerate; and then increase to 15 degrees pitch as necessary to maintain below 160 kts airspeed with the flaps at 15 degrees.This is a threat leaving ZZZ that I had never previously considered would happen. With the current light loads due to the Coronavirus I can see where increased vigilance on departure is required. This was a very busy phase of flight!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.