While I appreciate the answer, I cannot find anywhere, including the Apple web site, that agrees with it.
The Applications folder at the root of the drive from which you are booted, used to be ACL protected to prevent the end user from moving the folder.
The other Applications folder, inside the users Home folder, does not have any permissions problems as it was created for the end user when the admin account was created. I could not install there either
Prior to this install, I have been able to choose the Applications folder, root of booted drive, as the destination for X-Plane and have never had a permissions problem with updating anything about, or belonging to, X-Plane
When choosing the desktop as the location, the error "unable to install using \user\desktop" or words to that effect. I finally convinced it to install on my secondary drive, inside the documents folder. Not even close to the SSD I was aiming for.
Once again, I appreciate the reply which was the only one I received from three different forums.
P