A man painted a ‘welcome to Perth’ sign on the top of a building under the Sydney airport flight path to make passengers think they’d flown to the wrong city.

The building’s owner, Brad Heasman, told Autralia’s Travellers that he painted the sign in industrial road paint, to make it more visible, three months ago.

But it was only recently that a passenger shared a photo of the sign on the social media site Reddit.

Mr Heasman said he was inspired by a ‘Welcome to Cleveland’ prank painted on the rooftop of a building under the Milwaukee International Airport in 1978.

“I just figured there was no reason I couldn’t do the same thing and it’d make people laugh,” he said.

One Reddit user commented that the prank was “some high quality IRL [in real life] trolling”.

Another joked: “Imagine their disappointment when they realise it’s Sydney.”