I’m kind of confused about why it worked actually.
I do know a workaround though, and you don’t actually need to have MSFS 2020 installed for it to work, the installer just needs to see the “usercfg.opt” file to work out where the sim is installed. I’ve used this trick to install planes at work where I want to look through the files, even though I don’t have the game installed.
First, you need to create the entire folder path to that file, which is:
C:\Users\profilename\Appdata\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt
Or if you prefer:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt
Inside this file put a single line, that references the folder that contains your 2024 “Community” folder. For me that is:
InstalledPackagesPath "D:\Flight Simulator"
When the installer is run it should find this file, and that line, and install the plane into that folder, thinking the sim is installed.
It may differ from installer to installer, but this has worked for me with the few I have tried.