Having been an RJ pilot in and out of ATL, and having flown FAR 135 Charter in Citation V's and X's all over the US, Canada, Mexico and other areas in North America, I can tell you without a shadow doubt in my mind, that you are wrong.

In my meager 70 hours or so of MD-11 experience at Gemini doing a 3 NAT crossings, and a few Milan Italy to Madras India runs and back, that there is about as much in common with those trips as there was between my days as a CFI and days as a 121 PIC at the "regionals"

The incredible reliance on charts for example vs how we did things in the domestic route structure is night and day... you HAVE to keep up with your charts, routings and reporting points.. there is little or no radar in most of the world, and there are controllers that hardly understand you much less you them.. There are no nice cordial ATC handoffs between various centers.. No, you are to call the different FIR's in advance and if you forget to call the Iranian "Defense Radar" you might find yourself dodging a SAM.

You are not reading the news papers like on the domestic runs.. on the contrary, the few times so far that I've flown this type of "most challenging" flying, we've been busy with all kinds of cockpit tasks, not the least of which is ATC (or the lack thereof). Departures and Arrivals into strange airports with VERY different ways to deal with you; for example most airports don't give you nice speed/alt/vectors to get to the final approach fix... no, you get yourself there with them making it only more difficult by changing the instructions on you 5 times in 5 minutes.. Think.. HI WORKLOAD.

I can see where 200 or 300 hours of this can make you 100% more desirable at UPS than without it..