Technical problems Tuesday afternoon at the regional air traffic control center in Hampton, south of Atlanta, have slowed flight processing and caused delays nationwide, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The Hampton center had a communication link failure in the network at about 1:30 p.m., according to FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.

“As a result, all the flight plans for any instrument flights nationwide are having to be processed through a similar facility in Salt Lake City,” Bergen said. “So that’s slowing things down.”

The problem is not affecting air traffic control for flights in the air, but is affecting clearance to take off.

Most commercial flights use instrument flight rules, whereby planes are guided by controllers in communication with pilots.

Bergen said there are no issues with controllers’ ability to see planes on radar or communicate with aircraft in flight or on the ground.

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is experiencing delays of about 90 minutes for departures, and arriving flights are being held, according to airport spokesman Herschel Grangent.

Delta Air Lines and AirTran Airways, the two largest carriers at Hartsfield-Jackson, said they are experiencing delays. According to AirTran, it is taking up to an hour for to get clearances for departures, and passenger should expect delays this afternoon and evening.

“It’s all up and down the East Coast,” said AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson. “We expect it’ll get worse as time goes on.”

Controllers and trainees at the air traffic control center manage high-altitude flights for much of the Southeast, including Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The center’s controllers handle about 3 million flight operations a year. The center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Bergen estimated that Tuesday’s problem caused several hundred flight delays. She said the FAA does not plan to restore the system until after the evening rush, but expected it to be restored by Wednesday. According to the FAA’s Web site, the problem was causing delays of about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes Tuesday evening.

“The initial impact was on the Eastern half of the country,” but flights in the rest of the country are also affected, Bergen said. The Salt Lake City facility is “handling double duty.”

Hutcheson said AirTran was averaging two-hour delays Tuesday evening because of the FAA problem. “Pack a dose of patience when you come to the airport,” he said.

The communication failure was causing delays for departures and arrivals at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, according to airport spokeswoman Cheryl Stewart. However, she did not have a number on delays.

The FAA has asked that no new flight plans be filed, Stewart said. If an airline has not filed a flight plan yet, that flight cannot leave. However, some flights had already filed their plans and those planes were being allowed to depart, Stewart said.

Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Massport, which operates Boston’s Logan International Airport, said “there are significant delays, both inbound and outbound.” He declined to comment further. Bergen explained that if a plane was heading from Atlanta to Boston, for instance, and it was being held on the ground in Atlanta, it would be delayed arriving in Boston.

Carolyn Fennell, spokeswoman for the Orlando International Airport, said 13 Southwest Airlines flights had been affected by the glitch.

Brenda Geoghagan, a spokeswoman for Tampa International Airport in Florida, said “it may just be too soon” to determine the impact there. Christine Osborn, another spokeswoman at the Tampa airport, said there have been no delays due to the flight plan communication failure. But she said she anticipates problems in the coming hours.

“There’s definitely going to be some impact,” she said.

At Miami International Airport, there were no delays or cancellations due to the communication failure, said spokesman Marc Henderson.

“There are cancellations due to weather from the hurricane, but not due to this,” he said.

The National Airspace Data Interchange Network is a data communications system for air traffic controllers. It’s used to distribute flight plans and allows controllers to know when planes are leaving, where they’re going and other details.

Allen Kenitzer, a western regional spokesman for the FAA, said the Utah system could handle the extra load while workers tried to get the Atlanta system back online, but it was expected to slow down air traffic.

“We’re not going to let an unsafe condition exist. It’s just going to be slower,” Kenitzer said.

In June 2007, a computer failure at the Hampton FAA facility led to flight delays along the East Coast, but that problem had little impact on Hartsfield-Jackson. In last year’s incident, a computer that processes flight plans failed. It also caused those plans to be rerouted to Salt Lake City, which became overloaded with the increased volume.

In addition to the system that processes flight plans, the FAA complex in Hampton also has an air traffic control center, where controllers manage high-altitude flights for much of the Southeast, including Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The center’s controllers handle about 3 million flight operations a year. The center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But the problem Tuesday involved flight plans, not an air traffic control outage.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.