Abstract: Directional drilling is an advanced construction method in river crossing. Proper drilling process can be adopted in crossing of many types of formations, which has wider scope of application. But success or failure in crossing can be affected by many objective conditions, such as drilling process, adaptability of mud property and geologic setting, quality of operator, equipment capability, etc. Significance of the above conditions is found out from analysis on many failure processes in the Yellow River crossing engineering. Therefore puts forward a recommendation applicable for drilling engineering under different formation condition.