In early 1961, BUA applied to the Air Transport Licensing Board (ATLB), a predecessor of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), for a large number of domestic and international short-, medium- and long-haul scheduled route licences to give its scheduled network the critical mass to become financially viable by 1965, and to provide sufficient work for a planned £20 million fleet of new jets comprising four long-haul Vickers VC10s and five short-/medium-haul DH 121 Tridents. BUA's applications included a request for twice-weekly all-economy/colonial coach class flights linking Gatwick with Istanbul, Teheran, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangkok and Singapore, with a weekly extension to Hong Kong and Tokyo, respectively. BUA intended to inaugurate its first-ever scheduled services to Asia with DC-6Cs or Britannias, which were to be replaced with the new VC10s at a later stage. The airline planned to charge standard IATA fares on all sectors. In addition, it proposed to offer British residents flying to Singapore and Hong Kong in "Skycoach" an 18% discount on the equivalent economy class fares. In May of that year, BUA became the first independent airline in the UK to launch a brand-new jet aircraft, when it placed an order for ten short-/medium-haul BAC One-Eleven 200 series. The same month, the airline placed an order for four Vickers VC10 long-haul jets costing £2.8 million apiece. Laker personally negotiated these orders with both manufacturers. The combined order value was £20 million. At that time, the ATLB conducted a hearing into BUA's applications for over 20 scheduled route licences to enable it to expand the European network to include a number of major trunk routes from its Gatwick base, such as Gatwick to Paris, Milan, Zürich, Amsterdam and Athens, in competition with existing services of BEA from Heathrow. Although the ATLB granted BUA the requested licences for 12 of these routes, the airline was unable to use them without actual traffic rights.