Narrative:

During refueling; a grounding plug was dropped on the inboard portion of the flap causing a small dent. We were scheduled to depart that afternoon with 6 passengers. [Company] maintenance were notified of the problem and pictures were sent. Over the phone; I was told that the dent did not meet any of the criteria that would require it to be repaired. As a result of this conversation; I did not find it necessary to enter a discrepancy in the aircraft log book as the dent appeared to be cosmetic in nature. We departed to ZZZ and then home to ZZZ1. The [next] morning; the airplane was scheduled to fly on a part 135 flight. I again talked with maintenance about the dent in the flap and they responded that they had looked at it in the morning and again found no cause for concern. We flew; then flew the planned flight for the day. [Several days later;] the aircraft was scheduled for routine maintenance at the manufacture. I asked them to take a look at the flap in hopes of repairing the cosmetic damage. It was determined from lear jet that the flap did in fact have structural damage and required a repair. At this time; I became aware that we had flown the aircraft over several legs in an unairworthy condition. I was asked by the director of operations to place a write up in the aircraft log book dated [the date of the incident] and to send it to maintenance.the root cause of this was my failure to write up the damage on the ground. Contributing factors to my decision were that [company] maintenance had been advised by phone; text; and email; and did not believe that the damage was more than cosmetic.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Learjet 70 flight crew reported minor damage discovered on the flap was later determined to be in an unairworthy condition.

Narrative: During refueling; a grounding plug was dropped on the inboard portion of the flap causing a small dent. We were scheduled to depart that afternoon with 6 passengers. [Company] Maintenance were notified of the problem and pictures were sent. Over the phone; I was told that the dent did not meet any of the criteria that would require it to be repaired. As a result of this conversation; I did not find it necessary to enter a discrepancy in the aircraft log book as the dent appeared to be cosmetic in nature. We departed to ZZZ and then home to ZZZ1. The [next] morning; the airplane was scheduled to fly on a Part 135 flight. I again talked with Maintenance about the dent in the flap and they responded that they had looked at it in the morning and again found no cause for concern. We flew; then flew the planned flight for the day. [Several days later;] the aircraft was scheduled for routine maintenance at the manufacture. I asked them to take a look at the flap in hopes of repairing the cosmetic damage. It was determined from Lear Jet that the flap did in fact have structural damage and required a repair. At this time; I became aware that we had flown the aircraft over several legs in an unairworthy condition. I was asked by the Director of Operations to place a write up in the aircraft log book dated [the date of the incident] and to send it to Maintenance.The root cause of this was my failure to write up the damage on the ground. Contributing factors to my decision were that [Company] Maintenance had been advised by phone; text; and email; and did not believe that the damage was more than cosmetic.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.