An investigation is underway into the mass flight delays caused by an electronic communication failure at a Federal Aviation Administration facility. The faults which shut down the FAA’s primary system for processing flight plans caused delays in flight departures and landings all over the Eastern U.S. yesterday.

Delays of about 30 minutes and in some cases of two hours were reported in numerous airports from New York to Chicago. The glitch occurred at 1:25 p.m.

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport suffered the most as some planes took off two hours behind schedule. The same error caused delays of an hour and 15 minutes at Newark Liberty International Airport and the list of airports and delay goes on.

The FAA said the situation was remedied by Wednesday morning, but the investigation into what caused the agency’s primary system to shut down is still in motion and will take “a while,” said FAA spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere.

The embarrassing situation at the FAA reached even the presidential campaign as both Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama underlined the need for reform of the system.

"Airline passengers are sick and tired of delays and cancellations," Obama said.

As much as 650 planes took off behind schedule due to the software-related glitch, said Spitaliere. The FAA processes more than 300,000 flight plans in the U.S. in just one day.

The error occurred Tuesday afternoon as a communication link that transmits flight plan data from the Georgia facility to a similar facility in Salt Lake City went off. The Salt Lake City facility was forced to process all the extra work by its self and this caused the delays for departures and landings as well.