iPhone messages to an iPad using only iMessage?

I wanted to get others' opinions on this because I think it is an iOS bug with the iPhone... I apologize if this is already known but I did spend a significant amount of time googling for it first to no avail.

Go to the messages app and click to send a new message. Click contacts and select a contact of someone who for instance, has an iPad. If that person has no phone number for their contact, you will get a "No Phone Numbers" screen and you can't go any further.

Now try it from the phone app. Go to contacts in the phone app, select that same person, and now you are presented with multiple options including "send message" or whatever. If you click that, it opens the Messages app with a new message and the iPad user as the recipient and everything works fine.

So why do I have to go through the phone app to send a message to an iPad user from my contacts? I should be able to send a message straight from messages.

Oh and by the way, this problem doesn't exist on the iPad. When you select the contact from the messages app it puts them as the recipient for the new message like it should.

 

Bump. Any suggestions?