Fault-tolerant control systems (FTCS) are used in safety and critical applications to improve reliability and availability for sustained operation in fault situations. These systems may be used in process facilities to reduce significant production losses caused by irregular and unplanned equipment tripping. Internal combustion (IC) engines are widely used in the process sector, and efficient air–fuel ratio (AFR) regulation in the fuel system of these engines is critical for increasing engine efficiency, conserving fuel energy, and protecting the environment. In this paper, a hybrid fault-tolerant control system has been proposed, being a combination of two parts which are known as an active fault-tolerant control system and a passive fault-tolerant control system. The active part has been designed by using the genetic algorithm-based fault detection and isolation unit. This genetic algorithm provides estimated values to an engine control unit in case of a fault in any sensor. The passive system is designed by using the higher-order sliding mode control with an extra fuel actuator in the fuel supply line. The performance of the system was tested experimentally in MATLAB/Simulink environment. Based on the simulation results, the designed system can sustain the AFR despite sensor failures. A new method of managing the AFR of an IC engine has been demonstrated in this study, and it is highly capable, robust, reliable, and highly effective. A comparison with the existing works found in the literature also proves its superior performance. By inserting the fault in each sensor, it was clearly observed that proposed HFTCS was much better than the existing model as it was more fault-tolerant due to its ability to work in both online and offline modes. It also provided an exact value of 14.6 of AFR without any degradation.