School traffic never bothers Max Schneider. In the airplane he takes to class every day, his commute is pretty easy. It's nearly 7:30 a.m. when a small, five-passenger Piper Saratoga plane takes off from the mainland in Port Clinton, Ohio. Pilot Bob Ganley is on his way to pick up students heading to school. His first stop is Middle Bass Island, about a mile away from the school. Instead of a bus stop, Max's father is dropping him off at the Middle Bass airport to meet the plane. On Western Lake Erie, there are only a few inhabited islands. The school on Middle Bass closed in 1982. So Max and four other students go to Put-in-Bay School, located on South Bass Island. Their school bus will be this Piper plane. Ganley has two students to pick up: Max, a 10th-grader and Cecilia, a ninth-grader. After landing in Put-in-Bay's airport, Max and Cecilia walk to a large yellow van waiting in the airport's empty parking lot. They join two teachers who flew over from the mainland earlier. In the