In this article, the problem of robust fault-tolerant tracking control is investigated for the longitudinal model of airbreathing hypersonic vehicle in the presence of actuator faults and external disturbances. First, a fault-tolerant control strategy based on finite time integral sliding mode is presented for the longitudinal model of airbreathing hypersonic vehicle, which guarantees that velocity and altitude track their reference signals in finite time. However, this method needs to know the minimum value of actuator efficiency factor and the upper bound of external disturbances. Then, an improved adaptive fault-tolerant control scheme is developed, where two adaptive laws are used to estimate the upper bound of external disturbances and the minimum value of actuator efficiency factor. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed control strategy is effective in rejecting external disturbances and handling actuator faults.