In this study, a terminal sliding mode fault tolerant control approach is presented for the hypersonic vehicle attitude systems with actuator loss of effectiveness fault and external disturbance in the case of angular velocity constraints. Firstly, the nonlinear attitude systems of hypersonic vehicle are given, which contains dynamics equations and kinematics equations. For the aim of fault tolerant control, the actuator loss of effectiveness fault model is introduced. Secondly, the fault tolerant tracking controller is designed for the faulty attitude systems of hypersonic vehicle under angular velocity constraint case using terminal sliding mode technique. Meanwhile, the Lyapunov theory is used to analyze the stability of the closed-loop attitude systems. Finally, simulation for the attitude dynamics models show the feasibility of the proposed fault tolerant scheme.