Passenger boarding is a key activity of flight turnover. A reduction in boarding time can benefit airlines carriers, airports, and passengers in terms of economical, operational, and customer satisfaction reasons, respectively. The study classifies seat interference and aisle interference to aid in analyzing airplane boarding. A boarding experiment was conducted in a prototype cabin with forty-eight seats to evaluate six boarding strategies and explore the impact of music on boarding and passengers' perceived time. The experimental results confirm that reserve-pyramid and outside-to-inside strategies exhibit good efficiency. In addition, the back-to-front strategy used by several airlines is inefficient; and music significantly affects the perceived time and reduces the boarding time to a certain extent. The results of the study can provide a reference for airlines to select boarding strategies and improve passenger experience.