Operations at an air traffic control center in Hampton were back to normal Wednesday morning, federal officials said, a day after a software glitch snarled flight plan processing and delayed hundreds of airline flights nationwide.

Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the computer problem was fixed Tuesday evening about 7 p.m. Tuesday.

“We held off on allowing the system to assume a full load of flight plans until after midnight, after the evening rush was over. About 1:15 this morning, we allowed the computer to assume a full load and it’s working normally.”

Delta Air Lines spokesman Betsy Talton said the airline’s operations were normal Wednesday morning. Delta is the biggest carrier at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, whose Web site indicated no unusual delays or checkpoint backups.

Bergen said 644 flights nationwide, and 146 in Atlanta, were delayed on Tuesday. She said some of those were weather-related. Hartsfield-Jackson handles about 2,700 arrivals and departures each day, while the FAA says it processes more than 300,000 flight plans every 24 hours.

Delta canceled 61 flights systemwide on Tuesday, Talton said, most of them because of the FAA computer issue.

The troubles began around 1:30 p.m., when the regional center in Hampton, which processes flight plans for the eastern half of the country, had an unprecedented computer glitch. The problems quickly hop-scotched across the country, snarling big-city airports well into the night.

The most serious problems occurred at Logan International in Boston; O’Hare and Midway in Chicago; and at Hartsfield-Jackson.

The flight plans processed at the center contain information such as the departure and arrival points, the type of aircraft, the route, the name of the pilot and the number of people on board. Virtually all commercial flights operate under such flight plans.

The FAA shifted flight plan processing to a backup system in Salt Lake City, which generally shares the load with the Hampton facility.

In some cases, flight plans had to be re-filed before aircraft could take off. The backup system in Salt Lake City became overloaded. And with airplanes waiting to take off, the ground congestion delayed incoming flights.

The Hampton center also controls flights across the Southeast. There were never any issues with controllers’ ability to see planes on radar or communicate with aircraft in flight or on the ground, Bergen 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.

— Staff writer Mike Morris contributed to this report