"headed for failure" is a correct and commonly used phrase in written English.
It is typically used to describe a situation or action that is likely to lead to failure in the future. Example: "Despite their best efforts, the team's lack of preparation and poor communication skills left them headed for failure in the upcoming project."
At first Mr. Smith's farming efforts seemed headed for failure.
When that effort was headed for failure, Republican leaders disparaged the bill on ideological grounds.
Some have even argued that it should not receive guaranteed loans because it was headed for failure before Sept. 11.
Anything but frequent and prolonged negotiating rounds (though some might be unpublicized or employ back channels) would indicate that the negotiations were headed for failure.
Bush, under the kind of questioning he rarely gets, admitted that in 2006, with violence soaring, he worried that the mission in Iraq might be headed for failure.
While the two agencies charged with monitoring the grid and warding off huge problems were discussing the loss of two power lines, there were, in fact, eight lines down, and others headed for failure.
More important, the two Presidents reignited hopes that climate negotiations this month in Copenhagen, which had been heading for failure, might reach a meaningful compromise.
Congress was clear that it wanted the rescue package to make up the losses of healthy airlines that were thrown into crisis because of the attacks but not offer a new lease on life to carriers that were heading for failure on Sept. 10.
Newspapers in the Middle East express frustration with the Syrian peace talks in Geneva, which some fear are heading for failure.
In the spring of 1992, Justice Harry A. Blackmun's struggle to preserve the right to abortion he had articulated for the Supreme Court two decades earlier was headed for bitter failure.
