India, April 4 -- It's not a story that Air India tells about itself, though perhaps that could be because everyone who remembers it has probably left the airline.

But in the 1960s and for much of the 1970s, Air India operated a London-to-New York service every day.

At that time, the trans-Atlantic route was the most competitive in the world, and European and American Airlines would slug it out for supremacy. Despite this, Air India, a small airline from a country that had no significant aviation tradition, managed to make a mark.

The big global carriers tried to figure out what Air India was doing right. They discovered that its on-time performance could not match say, Pan Am's. It couldn't be the fares. In that era, the airline carte...