Narrative:

After exterior pre-flight inspection the first officer notified me that he discovered the lower aft tip of the left wing split scimitar was missing. I went out and confirmed what he saw and compared it to the right wing and another 737 sitting at the adjacent gate. We looked in our maintenance history on our ipads for the flight to see if it was documented and could not find it. I expected to find an entry in the long term deferred items but is was not there. I also did a search for 'scimitar' and found 3 hits; none of which were related to the missing portion of the wing tip. In the meantime; the first officer (first officer) called maintenance about it and after about 5 minutes; maintenance said it was in the history and must have fallen off the long term deferred list with no explanation. Maintenance indicated that it had been written up many times.I decided to write it up for the following reason. I was taking the plane on 3 legs of a charter and we would not be anywhere near a normal gate during that charter operation. If; for some reason; the FAA (federal aviation administration) were to ramp check us and notice the missing wing tip and ask for documentation; I did not have any without a cleared recent write up.damage was caused by a vendor food truck. The repair was considered an acceptable permanent repair per srm 57-31-01 fig 201 rpr 2.the problem is that pilots are not trained to identify or recognize an accepted repair such as this. We are trained to identify and recognize things that are missing or not normal such as this. Hence; this is why it keeps getting pinged and written up causing more individual delays down line of when the repair was made.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737NG Captain reported a discrepancy with the winglet on walk around.

Narrative: After exterior pre-flight inspection the First Officer notified me that he discovered the lower aft tip of the left wing split scimitar was missing. I went out and confirmed what he saw and compared it to the right wing and another 737 sitting at the adjacent gate. We looked in our maintenance history on our iPads for the flight to see if it was documented and could not find it. I expected to find an entry in the Long Term Deferred Items but is was not there. I also did a search for 'Scimitar' and found 3 hits; none of which were related to the missing portion of the wing tip. In the meantime; the FO (First Officer) called Maintenance about it and after about 5 minutes; Maintenance said it was in the history and must have fallen off the Long Term Deferred List with no explanation. Maintenance indicated that it had been written up many times.I decided to write it up for the following reason. I was taking the plane on 3 legs of a charter and we would not be anywhere near a normal gate during that charter operation. If; for some reason; the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) were to ramp check us and notice the missing wing tip and ask for documentation; I did not have any without a cleared recent write up.Damage was caused by a vendor food truck. The repair was considered an acceptable permanent repair per SRM 57-31-01 Fig 201 RPR 2.The problem is that pilots are not trained to identify or recognize an accepted repair such as this. We are trained to identify and recognize things that are missing or not normal such as this. Hence; this is why it keeps getting pinged and written up causing more individual delays down line of when the repair was made.

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.