OK so we gather this is not a safety issue. But just imagine one or more passengers had seen the aforesaid part missing??? Mis-informed Joe-public sometimes will not fly with a Bin-Laden lookalike on board. So what would they think about a big hole in the skin? Lucky it is on the blindside for boarding eh?
It always amazes me that the airlines spend so much on the paint-job (corporate image massaging?) when, at most large airports anyway, the aircraft can hardly be seen. One can only assume that in the minds of the airline management, nice paint-job equates to well-maintained aircraft = safe aircraft. So getting back to the point of this thread, a missing panel hardly maintains this "ultra-safe" image to which everyone tries to aspire.