It has long been rumoured, especially in this thread, that the debut destination would be PEK.

For long haul, my guess would be LHR/JFK. Selfishly, I'd vote for LHR and would go out of my way to try Aria. But given we're close to October and it's been radio silence from CX, we'd be lucky to see the product in Q4.

I feel a disturbance in the force next month :)

It sounds like you know something we don't here. :)

how much time required to complete one B777-300ER Aria suite conversion ?

As long as it needs to ensure your safety.

Truthfully, not long at all but as it's the first one and Cathay likes to do it right (e.g. A350 engines and the temporary grounding of the fleet) we can be sure it's going to be good/right such that the rest of the conversion can be smooth (given that this is a pretty big deal)

Last time I asked that of Lavinia Lau, she said they were looking at a flow rate of one per month. More generally though, for obvious reasons, any 'first' refurb always takes the longest, once you've got a few under your belt the pace picks up.

Hahaha! The Force is strong with us!

More info will be revealed sometime this October, stay tuned.

how do you know? any proof?

nivla83 is correct - although lets just say anyone (including myself) that does know doesn't want to say exactly what, yet but it is definitely positive.

It will be nice to see not only a new product in J but a complete revamp of the 777 long haul fleet sort of a midlife refresh to keep the aircraft going for another 15+ years.

There is a lottery for CX staff to attend the Aria launch event, so I guess the cat is out of the bag now:

It's still going to be evolutionary at best though - Aria will be incrementally better than FB3, which is itself an evolution of FB2 Cirrus. Even legacy FB2 is still leagues better than newest regional Business in 32Q (my wife was on a FB2 33E to TPE last weekend).

We've seen the renders so yes, of course it's only evolutionary. But there's a lot you can do with an evolutionary seat that will make it nice. I've never really understood the affection of the Cirrus, which is getting pretty long in the tooth now.

On the 777, it is by far one of the most comfortable seats in C in my view. I find the 350 version to be less comfortable (and the 333 barely OK). Why is that? Out of all the new seats (Q-Suite, Vantage XL (QR, DL, SK etc), Super Diamond (BA, QR and a plethora more)), it offers by far the most room above your feet when in lie flat which, for some reason, makers of the above seats (granted not XL seat) thought was a good place to locate the table. On the Cirrus seat I am able to turn without feeling constricted, and as a result, in the other seats, I frequently wake up. The XL is obviously constricted by the fact it becomes surface area in the seat ahead.

For me, barring a revolution in seat design (which at this point looks like it comes with ability to change physics), the Cirrus is a fairly clear winner. I think the Qsuite is fine (but not lauded as it is on the QR board), Vantage XL is also fine but Super Diamond is great for lounging but would avoid if I can overnight. Do not even get me started on the seat supplier for EK, TG, IB... ;) :D