Firstly, I deeply resent the 1 fully wasted day I had to spend waiting in line at the US embassy to get my C1/D and B1B2 Visa. Utter waste of my time. I also resent the several hundred dollars this unnecessary procedure is costing my company, and ultimately my customer.
Secondly, I see strictly NO reason to subject our US colleagues to the same bull****, as one way or the other there is strictly NO security gain to be had from this whole rigmarole (sp?).
However, in these silly times, RECIPROCITY seems to be the only method to insure that we European operators are not put at an unfair disadvantage: If I have to spend several thousand dollars a year equipping my crews with visas, so should the US operators.. If I have to order and buy a silly customs decal to cross the pond, so should the US planes to come over here. If I have to apply 48 hours in advance for a US flight, and waste precious SATCOM minutes on phoning US customs 3 hours before landing, then the same should go the other way... Same deal for making the pax disembark and go through fingerprinting. Same for cabotage inside Schengen airspace...
We all know it's a bunch of silly and useless procedures that make our job a pain in the butt. But there is really no choice than to do unto them as they would unto us...