The ill-fated Air India flight Kanishka that exploded off the Irish coast killing all 329 passengers on board in 1985, had carried an extra engine which meant that more luggage had to be loaded on the back of the aircraft to balance it.

The Air India aircraft was carrying an extra engine called a fifth pod underneath a wing. "A fifth pod would move the centre of gravity forward, so this means we would have to load more [luggage] on the back of the aircraft to balance it," Byron Graham, then an Air Canada luggage agent working at Toronto's International Airport on June 22, 1985, told the British Colombia Supreme Court hearing the case, on Tuesday.

The Boeing 747 jumbo jet's engine had broken down a couple of weeks earlier and was being transferred to Mumbai for repairs, Graham, now retired, told the court on being questioned by Crown prosecutor Gordon Matei.

The baggage included pieces that had been loaded in Frankfurt. More luggage were to be transferred and unloaded in Montreal, London, New Delhi and Mumbai, the flight's final destination. But the delayed flight crashed about 45 minutes before reaching London.

The Crown is trying to connect 'itty bitty dots' in what is believed to be the most complex criminal case in Canadian history, Geoffrey Gaul, spokesman for the team of Air India prosecutors hearing the trial of the two British Columbia men, said outside the court.

Ripudaman Singh Malik, 56 and Ajaib Singh Bagri, 53, face eight counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in the bombing of Flight 182.

Michael Doherty, who worked in a baggage handling area at the Toronto airport where the Canadian Pacific Airlines luggage from Vancouver arrived, told the court on Tuesday that there was high volume of luggage to be transported to an Air India flight bound for Montreal on the afternoon of June 22, 1985.

It took 55 to 65 minutes for the baggage to be unloaded from one terminal and transferred to the second terminal before it could be sent to an X-ray area, he said.

A former Canadian Pacific Airlines employee Ross McLean told Justice Ian Donaldson that the Toronto baggage area, which received luggage originating in Vancouver, was restricted to employees.

But Richard Peck, defence lawyer for Bagri, quoted a December 1999 police interview in which McLean said anybody could have put a bag in the area and it wasn't secure.

McLean replied that the area was secure and that he would have noticed someone without an airline uniform. "It would be highly unlikely that somebody put a bag there that shouldn't be there," he told the court.

Earlier, the testimony had focused on details of baggage handling. A former Canadian Airlines clerk had testified that a man had insisted on checking in a suitcase on the Air India plane despite the fact that he did not have a confirmed ticket on the flight.

The Kanishka bombing: Complete Coverage