  Collisions of cosmic rays in the atmosphere may produce heavy hadrons of very
high energy. The decay length of a $B$ meson of energy above $10^7$ GeV is
larger than 1 km, implying that such a particle tends to interact in the air
before it decays. We show that the fraction of energy deposited in these
interactions is much smaller than in proton and pion collisions. We
parameterize their elasticity and determine the average number of interactions
and the atmospheric depth at the decay point for different initial energies. We
find that the profile of a $3\times 10^9$ GeV bottom shower may be very
different from the profile of a proton shower of the same energy, defining
either a very deep maximum, or two maxima, or other features that cannot be
parameterized with a single Gaisser-Hillas function. Finally, we discuss under
what conditions a bottom hadron inside the parent air shower may provide
observable effects.
