Maggie's Farm

In/out of Quito many times, always in a DC-6 and always daytime VFR. I swear, I don't remember that approach being over the city, but it was 60 years ago and the old memory's getting dim. Quito's the place to buy cheap those large, carved wood plaques of rural life in the Andes, usually involving an old man and a donkey. One wall of our dining room still has a bunch of them, despite having given most of them away over the years. They look like such bargains in those little stalls in and around the terminal.

Compared to Ezeiza (Buenos Aires), Quito is difficult. Compared to Toncontin (Tegucigalpa), Quito is a piece of cake. You're right about certifications, airworthiness etc. as a baseline, but within "acceptable risk" airports, there are varying degrees of difficulty and risk. Basically a higher risk, hence more difficult approach requires fewer and smaller flight crew errors, so higher risk airports have additional experience requirements such as total flying hours, simulator training on the approach, flying the approach under supervision of someone who has flown it before... (Yeah, flight crews make mistakes all the time, but are constantly correcting them so it all washes out at touchdown, and no one but the flight crew ever knows unless they live to nearly 90 and start blabbing).