Legal question
Here is the problem. The company I work for flies tours out of a public airport located on a island. The island is know to be a party spot during the summer, but is inhabited by retirees during the rest of the year, who undoubtedly do not like the idea of college kids, and anyone else who likes to have a good time coming to their peaceful little homes for 4 months out of the year to do ruin their blissful lifestyle.
We fly tours from May until October, and run pretty much non stop for those months only. The locals hate us, I wish I could emphasis the word hate even more than typing allows, but I am sure you can figure out what I am trying to convey. With that being said, they call the FAA pretty much on a regular basis to report "unsafe activity". The Feds have shown up with every call only to sit and talk with us, and watch what we are doing. They will normally do the obligatory ramp check, then make sure all are ducks are in a row, then shake their head, and tell us that they have to come out because there are complaints, but they know every time they have came to visit, we have never displayed any evidence that we are operating unsafely.
The locals have gotten quite upset that nothing has been done to stop our operations, so they have formed a "pilot advisory board" to comment on safety issues on the airport. The board is comprised of all fixed wing pilots with the exception of one helicopter private pilot. With this, they are trying to enforce that we shut down every time we land. They're claiming that hot loading passengers is too dangerous an operation, and they do not want it on the airport. We have been told by a few people that do like the idea us being there because we bring business to them, that they are doing it in hope's that it will cause us to leave because it will make the wait times to long for people to want to stand around in the summer to wait on a ride.
Our landing area is a fenced in area on blacktop with only one entrance, and the passengers are loaded by trained ground crewmen who only approach the aircraft after it has landed, and rolled to idle. We have never had any incident where anyone's life has been put in danger while conducting flight operations.
My question (sorry to be long winded) is, do we have to legally abide by these rules if they are not stated in an A/FD? I was under the impression that unless it states in the FAA prescribed manual what can, and cannot be done on an airport then it not necessarily doesn't matter, but it is something that one doesn't need to fear repercussion from the FSDO.
They are having a town meeting to discuss the matter in a few weeks, and my boss and I are going to be in attendance. I would like to have a few documents that would help back the point I am trying to make. Do anyone have any advice in this matter? If so, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again.