This paper presents the design of flight control system for crippled aircraft with engine thrust only. The longitudinal attitudes of propulsion control aircraft are guided through the explicit model-following tracker. The technique of command generator tracker is applied to convert the model-matching problem into a regulator problem. The model mismatch error is minimized by means of linear quadratic optimal control. Furthermore, the genetic algorithms (GAs) are employed to search the optimal parameters of the robust controller. Computer simulation demonstrates the responses of crippled aircraft behave like those of nominal model and the controller possesses the robustness against elevator with partial effective, engine delay, and sensor noise.