This article investigates the fixed-time fault-tolerant formation control problem of a leader–follower heterogeneous multiagent system (HMAS), including multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) under loss of effectiveness actuator faults and disturbances. Different from the existing fixed-time formation results, to realize the special application, a finite-time performance function (FTPF) is considered, which can guarantee that formation error converges to a prescribed arbitrarily small region within a known time. Then, based on sliding mode control and bi-limit homogeneity, distributed and decentralized fixed-time formation control algorithms are constructed for the HMAS in the $x$ – $y$ axis and $z$ axis, respectively, which can steer the whole system achieving target formation configuration within a scheduled time. In addition, based on local state information, adaptive online updating strategies for unknown actuator efficiency factors and lumped uncertainties are proposed. Then, under the online updating parameters, two novel distributed and decentralized adaptive fault-tolerant formation control laws are presented using practical fixed-time stability theory, which not only achieves stable formation tracking with finite-time prescribed behavioral metrics but also ensures that the formation errors are uniformly bounded within a settling time. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed control schemes is verified by simulation examples.