Quadrotor trajectory tracking under wind gusts and ground effect remains challenging due to unknown disturbances, model uncertainties, and the system’s underactuated nature. This paper presents an adaptive fractional-order terminal integral sliding mode control (AFOTISMC) to address these challenges. The controller integrates fractional-order Riemann-Liouville operators into an integral terminal sliding surface, ensuring finite-time convergence while eliminating chattering and singularity. Adaptive laws estimate unknown disturbance bounds without requiring prior knowledge. Lyapunov analysis proves global finite-time stability. Comprehensive simulations under wind-like disturbances, 30% parametric uncertainties in mass and inertia, and ground effect show that AFOTISMC reduces Integral Absolute Error (IAE) by up to 53% for position and 77% for yaw compared to conventional SMC, and by 12–31% compared to recent fractional-order SMC methods. Control energy consumption is reduced by 20–40% across all channels. These results confirm the practical significance of AFOTISMC for safe quadrotor operation in real-world windy environments and during landing in ground effect.
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