Yes, it is in the #1 position. It is the only scenery installed.
Are you saying that PHNL is the ONLY scenery you installed in FS9 ? Meaning, you have just installed FS9 from scratch (after uninstalling it AND cleaning its folder, if it was previously installed on this system), and you are seeing this ?
Or, are you simply saying that you don't have any other scenery installed that is easily identifiable as being related to PHNL ?
If I re-install, it works the 1st time, then the 2nd time I start the program, the default scenery is back.
This can't simply happen. The strange thing is the appearance of the default scenery. IF you had problems with the Addon Manager (most likely because the antivirus was blocking it), you shouldn't see any buildings, but you should still see the PHNL ground scenery and, most important, NO DEFAULT scenery at all.
And, don't be focused on being the default scenery, just because terminals "looks like default". It can be an addon AFCAD, which are usually copies of the default AFCAD, with different parking positions so, what you are seeing might be default buildings, but generated by an addon AFCAD, which is causing the conflict.
As was said in another thread, putting PHNL at the top of the Library it's required, but it's not enough. If you have a conflicting AFCAD, you need to remove it.