  The contribution of different components of an air shower to the total energy
deposit in the atmosphere, for different angles and primary particles, was
studied using the CORSIKA air shower simulation code. The amount of missing
energy, parameterized in terms of the calorimetric energy, was calculated. The
results show that this parameterization varies less than 1% with angle or
observation level. The dependence with the primary mass is less than 5% and,
with the high energy hadronic interaction model, less than 2%. The systematic
error introduced by the use of just one parameterization of the missing energy
correction function, for an equal mixture of proton and iron at 45deg, was
calculated to be below 3%. We estimate the statistical error due to
shower-to-shower fluctuations to be about 1%.
