Hello Slingsby,
Having flown 747's into there on many occassions I can tell you that precision is the name of the game. There is no ILS installed, so it is basically a visual approach. There is a VOR/DME approach if there are some low clouds in the area. There are some interesting pictures out there. The attached link is on the topic of st. maarten on a previous thread.
One detail I would like to share is that the road behind the runway is so close to the fence that it actually has traffic lights, and a barrier when large aircraft are on the approach. We had to get the all clear first to make sure none of the tourists or locals were standing near the fence before we applied take-off thrust. There is a very neat video of this not being adhered to and people getting blown from the fence all the way into the sea.
Greetings O.
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...threadid=92706