Over 40,000 pieces of wreckage from a China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region had been recovered by Wednesday, an official told a press briefing on Thursday.

Most of the wreckage pieces have been transferred to a storage site for sorting and further examination, said Zhu Tao, head of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

The total search area has reached nearly 10 million square meters, Zhu added.

Equipment including 216 fire trucks and 16 drones was used in the large-scale search and rescue operation.

The Boeing 737 aircraft flying from Kunming to Guangzhou crashed into a mountainous area in Tengxian County, Guangxi, at around 2:38 p.m. on March 21, killing all 132 people on board, including 123 passengers and nine crew members.