<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by alvn:
What are the advantages and disadvantages to booking these on one ticket?</font>
If you want to take advantage of the refundability of the refundable segment, ticket them separately. Also if the outbound is UA and it's on their stock, and you're buying a nonrefundable fare from them, you're going to have to pay $100 if you need to have the ticket reissued. If the Continental segments are fully refundable, changeable you should have no problem making changes to your reservation for the CO segments.. just as long as you don't need to reissue.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">
Would they have to paper tickets in that case?</font>
If you ticket a reservation on multiple carriers, you're usually going to wind up with paper tickets. The exception is when the carriers have e-ticketing agreements. Not sure who does and who doesn't, but something in the back of my mind tells me that UA and NW might, but that UA and CO do not. I could be wrong on that score.