Jack Li shows how to enable a trace flag without sysadmin or changing any application code:
The initial thought is to enable the trace flag at session level. We ran into two challenges. First, application needs code change (which they couldn’t do) to enable it. Secondly, dbcc traceon requires sysadmin rights. Customer’s application used a non-sysadmin user. These two restrictions made it seem impossible to use the trace flag.
However, we eventually came up with a way of using logon trigger coupled with wrapping the dbcc traceon command inside a stored procedure. In doing so, we solved all problems. We were able to isolate the trace flag just to that application without requiring sysadmin login.
This is the very edge of an edge case. In normal practice, change the code.