AirBnb replacing my lead photo with another photo of my cabin.

Has anyone noticed that AirBnb switches the default lead photo to a picture of the front of your home? If you have a picture of a Mountain/Beach View as your first picture, they default it to the front of the home. I have a more appealing aerial photo of the side of my cabin as my lead photo and they switched it to the less appealing front of my cabin. It’s unreal they won’t let us run our own listing!! Obviously, the second picture is better. I don't know how to switch it back without erasing the other photo, but I don't want to do that. I am API connected to AirBnb.

Unfortunately, your analysis of the situation is correct - Airbnb considers that they (or their algorithm anyway) know better than you do as to which should be your first front-page photo.  So they do what they want to do, and it is not possible to override it.