Actually the air shuttle service was available to all employees assuming 1) They had an existing route for your source/destination 2) It was a valid business reason they would be paying travel expenses for anyways.
Edit: But your implied point that it probably cost a lot of money is true.
If the iGPU is getting the job done, I would leave that alone. You could add a GPU and pass it through to a gaming VM. But that is an entirely different project.