In this paper, a passive fault tolerant control strategy carried out under the concept of higher order sliding mode control is developed for the diesel engine air path. The proposed fault tolerant strategy incorporates a Super-Twisting algorithm controller which handles parametric uncertainties and actuator faults. In this paper we consider two types of actuator faults, additive and loss-of-effectiveness faults. Theoretical results on the convergence of the proposed controller based on the Lyapunov theory are presented. The simulations of the proposed controller on a recently validated experimental air path diesel engine model show good results under actuator faults conditions even in the presence of parametric uncertainties.