In this article, a distributed observer-based fault-tolerant control strategy is proposed for interconnected systems, in which sensor faults, actuator faults, and disturbances are tackled. First, by augmenting the original system into a new descriptor system, a sliding mode observer (SMO) design scheme that considered the associated interconnection information among subsystems is proposed. Then, sensor faults, actuator faults, and disturbances are reconstructed, and the accuracy of the reconstruction of interconnected systems is improved. Second, based upon the proposed SMO, a distributed SMO-based fault-tolerant controller is developed to compensate sensor faults, actuator faults, and disturbances for considered interconnected systems. Then, the stabilization of the overall closed-loop interconnected systems can be guaranteed. Finally, a numerical example with two subsystems and the meta aircraft with multiple aircraft joined are utilized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.