Late last year, a handful of executives from Irish drugmaker Elan Corp flew by private jet from San Francisco to New York to notify the board they planned to lay off 130 workers, according a source familiar with the situation.

The employees, which represent about 10% of the company's workforce, were based mostly in the company's research and development facility in San Francisco.

Elan said that roughly 50% of the layoffs were scientists and the remainder were supporting staff.

"Elan has nurtured - and will continue to nurture - one of the industry's most respected and successful R&D teams," the company said in an email. "That said, in a highly competitive market where resources are limited, we have a responsibility to continually evaluate our programs so that we remain efficient and focused on the best opportunities for patients and investors."

The company said it will continue to have a "significant" R&D staff in San Francisco, though it declined to say how many people remain at the facility.

Even as the company continues its layoffs - it fired 114 people at the end of December 2008 - its executives continue to travel in private jets, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Elan's use of private jets has been sore point with investors for several years. The company, which reported a loss of $258.7 million for the first nine months of 2010, makes the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri with U.S. biotechnology company Biogen Idec. Its shares have fallen 80% to $7.03 since July 2008.

Kyran McLaughlin, the company's outgoing chairman, previously told investors that the company's private jet use represented only 20 percent of total travel costs and less than 1% of operating expenses.

Nonetheless, investors did not like it, and in 2009 the company told Bloomberg News it had not renewed its contract with NetJets Inc, the private jet company owned by Warren Buffett, though it said that that could change "if the scales balanced in terms of less overnights, associated expenses and executive time."

Elan declined to comment on its current corporate jet contracts, saying only that it has a "multi-year objective to become a profitable, sustainable and self-funding biotechnology company by the end of 2011 - a goal we are well on target to achieve."